Kueth Yich Thon: Alice Springs teacher’s aide guilty of smuggling 1.8kg of cannabis on bus

A young man took a Greyhound bus to the Red Centre capital with illicit cargo: four bags of drugs with a street value of $22,500. He’s now been sentenced in the Supreme Court.

Yipirinya School, Alice Springs, where drug runner Kueth Yich Thon worked as a teacher’s aide most recently. Picture: Alex Treacy

A young teacher’s aide in the employ of an Alice Springs school was busted on a Greyhound bus attempting to transport more than 1.8 kilograms of cannabis into the Red Centre capital, a court has heard.

Alice Springs man Kueth Yich Thon, 20, pleaded guilty to supplying a commercial quantity of cannabis.

He was sentenced in the Supreme Court at Alice Springs last Thursday.

The court heard Thon was a passenger on a Greyhound bus arriving at Leichhardt Tce on the afternoon of June 9 last year when NT Police, acting on intelligence, boarded the bus and searched his bag.

Wrapped inside clothing, officers discovered four bags of cannabis totalling 1.891kg, with a potential street value of $22,500.

Justice John Reeves told the court he considered Thon’s offending to be at the lower end of the range of seriousness.

“The evidence does not establish whether your involvement extended beyond that of a single trip courier,” the judge said.

“In particular, there is no evidence of you having a more active and direct role in the commercial sale and distribution of the cannabis you had in your possession.

“Nor is there any evidence of you being involved in a commercial network with other accomplices or that you had previously undertaken other trips of a similar kind.”

Thon transported the drugs to Alice Springs via a Greyhound Australia coach. Picture: Supplied

Also in the defendant’s favour was his lack of prior serious offending.

The court heard Thon was born and raised in Melbourne but relocated to Alice Springs, where he completed his high schooling, in 2021 alongside his mother and three siblings.

He had been in “irregular” employment since his graduation, working stints at HiQA Geotechnical, Northwest Aviation Services, and most recently Yipirinya School, where he worked as a teacher’s aide.

Thon’s lawyer told the court his client had abstained from cannabis since his arrest (he spent eight days on remand) and had become motivated to pull up his socks after the recent shooting and killing of a cousin back in his home town of Melbourne.

Finding Thon had good prospects of rehabilitation, Justice Reeves sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for an operational period of two years, on condition Thon be under the supervision of a probation and parole officer.

Originally published as Kueth Yich Thon: Alice Springs teacher’s aide guilty of smuggling 1.8kg of cannabis on bus