A 22-YEAR-OLD student who stole two packets of cigarettes and $70 from a service station will pay more than he likely bargained for - a four-year jail term.
Nicholais Havet walked into a Coles Express service station in Killarney Vale just after 4am on May 14 last year, wandering around for a few minutes before asking the guy behind the counter for a couple of packets of cigarettes.
After pulling out his phone and his wallet as if to pay, he pulled a knife out of his pants and pointed it at the attended and asked for the money out of the till.
"You're kidding, aren't you?" the attendant said, before handing over $70 and asking Havet if he wanted the coins as well. "Do you really want to go to gaol for $70?", he asked.
Havet left took the cash and cigarettes and jumped the back fence to escape, while the attendant activated the hold-up alarm, and spoke to security. Police arrived a short time later.
Atter releasing CCTV footage of the incident online, police received pointing to Havet who was arrested nine days later at the house he lived in with his mum.
They found messages on his mobile phone to another person saying: "Now I'm on the run", and " If I hold up these ---s with a - will you come pick me up,".
He also said: "Then get a knife. Like I might ask for it one more time then get a knife".
Havet initially denied it was him in the CCTV footage, but during a search of the house police found the knife, as well as a black replica pistol, a bag of cocaine and steroids. In his first, three-hour police interview, Havet denied all of the allegations and gave several varying explanations for the things found in his room but later asked for a second interview in which he admitted to the offences.
He said he'd been using Xanax, cocaine, oxycodone and ecstasy in the lead up to the robbery, and had recently been kicked out of a house he'd been sharing with friends.
District Court Judge Tanya Bright said that because the replica pistol imitated an actual firearm to a substantial degree, it had the capacity to be used for criminal activity and victims would not realise it was a replica, including the service station attendant who would have been "terrified".
Havet had been studying mathematics at the University of Newcastle for six months and working two jobs when he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to armed robbery with an offensive weapon, as well as being in possession of an unauthorised pistol, prohibited drug, restricted substance, and a stolen knife. In a letter to the court Havet said there was no excuse for the robbery. "I neither smoke nor needed the money," he said.
"The only explanation .... is that I was affected by unprescribed substances, which I had foolishly experimented with." He apologised to the victim, and vowed to never come to court again.
Judge Bright sentenced him to four years with a non-parole period of two years, backdated to his arrest, making him eligible for release in May, 2022.
