Dennis Bryan Tobane jailed for Park Avenue Foodworks armed robbery

“Don’t do anything stupid. Just give us the money or we’ll jab you”. These were the frightening words spoken by armed robbers to a Queensland supermarket worker during a brazen broad-daylight crime.

Dennis Bryan Tobane.

“Don’t do anything stupid. Just give us the money or we’ll jab you.”

These were the harrowing words spoken by brazen armed robbers to a supermarket worker during a broad-daylight crime, Rockhampton District Court heard.

Dennis Bryan Tobane, 24, was one of two armed males who entered the Park Avenue Foodworks about 11.30am on October 2, 2022.

Dennis Bryan Tobane. Picture: Facebook

Crown Prosecutor Ryan Godfrey told the court the pair – the co-accused being a 16-year-old yet to be dealt with by the courts – browsed the aisles before the teen took a pair of scissors out of packaging and they walked up to and behind the service counter.

He said the victim staff member told them they were not allowed to be there to which they responded “don’t do anything stupid. Just give us the money or we’ll jab you” while the child brandished the scissors and Tobane a steak knife.

Mr Godfrey said the victim opened the cash registers with Tobane “grabbing handfuls of money from one” and the child tipping another into a shopping bag.

“Both jumped the counter and left,” he said.

Police cars at the Foodworks store on Main Street, Park Avenue, on Sunday, October 2, 2022.

Judge Jeff Clarke said this must have been a “confronting and scary experience” for the worker.

Mr Godfrey said the males got away with about $1800-$1900 in cash but Tobane was found only with $345 in a black bag and $21 in coins in his pocket.

He said Tobane was too drunk at the time to be interviewed by police.

Defence barrister Maree Willey said her client, a father to a six-year-old, lived at Woorabinda with his grandfather but had been in Rockhampton visiting his sister and hanging around children.

She said it was the children he was with who had wanted to rob the store and he just went along.

Ms Willey said Tobane had been raised by his grandfather after his father’s death by overdose when he was six.

Tobane was on a suspended sentence at the time of the robbery for going on a joy ride in a stolen car his mates were driving.

He had been sentenced in Woorabinda Magistrates Court to nine months prison in August 2022.

Judge Clarke activated that suspended sentence in full.

Tobane pleaded guilty to one count of armed robbery in company on August 11, 2023, and was sentenced to three years in jail.

Judge Clarke declared 313 days presentence custody as time served and ordered Tobane be released on parole on August 14, 2023.

Originally published as Dennis Bryan Tobane jailed for Park Avenue Foodworks armed robbery