A MAN who held police at bay for hours in a siege at Maryland where he threatened to kill himself as well as threatening police with what looked like a machine gun has been sentenced to three years imprisonment.
The 31-year-old appeared in Newcastle District Court via audiovisual link from a Sydney Correctional Centre on Tuesday, supported by family members.
He has pleaded guilty to a string of offences in relation to the July 2 siege last year, including assault a police officer causing actual bodily harm, use a prohibited firearm, and fire a weapon with intent.
The man said he had reached a point in his life where he felt he had nothing left to live for, and couldn't find a way out.
He had stopped taking prescribed medication some months before and was using amphetamines and cannabis, and he was "over life", he said.
"I couldn't see any way back out of the hole that I had created for myself," he said.
"I tried to take my own life, and nothing was working to fix that. If I didn't care if I lived, why did I care about how I lived."
Being imprisoned for the past eleven months had helped him sober up and regain his health, mentally and physically, he said. He was glad to still be alive, and to have the opportunity to watch his children grow up.
He was sorry, he said, for everybody involved, including the police officers who ran from the scene when he pulled out a gel gun which was styled to replicate a military-style machine gun.
"I am so regretful and sorry for putting them in that position," he said.
The police were outside the man's home trying to negotiate with him, with his terrified family upstairs, during what turned into a tense siege.
He was behaving irrationally, and has since admitted that he was trying to bait officers into shooting him.
He had initially armed himself with four knives, tapping the knives on the window and telling the police outside the home: "I want to die, I want to f---ing die," and live-streamed some of the incident on social media.
A few moments later he reappeared in the window with a gel-blaster gun, styled to closely resemble a military-style machine gun, opened the shutters, kicked out the fly screen window and began firing at police.
The two police officers nearest the home saw the gun and fled, believing they were about to be shot.
He told Judge Tim Gartlemann on Tuesday he was sorry to have made the officers feel the terror he imagined they must have felt, thinking they might be "severely injured or worse".
"They are brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the community and I am so regretful and so sorry for putting them in that position. It's not fair."
One of the officers was shot in the temple with a projectile. Police spent the next 90 minutes outside the house while he screamed and shot at them.
Judge Gartelmann said that he found the man less culpable than he would otherwise due to his significant mental health issues with which he was first diagnosed as a teenager, and which included PTSD and borderline personality disorder.
He had stopped using prescription medication and was self-medicating with amphetamines and cannabis which, at the time of the siege, he was using on a daily basis. He lost his job and became homeless.
He suffered physical abuse as a child as well as child sexual abuse over many years during his early childhood into his early teens, pre-disposing him to experience substance abuse, the judge said.
He had made an attempt on his own life and was hospitalised, after which he attempted to access residential rehabilitation but, due to COVID-19 restrictions, was unable to do so.
He was sentenced to three years in prison, with a non-parole period of one year and six months, making him eligible for release on parole on January 1, 2022.
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