A YOUNG man who fired three shots from a moving car into a house at Raymond Terrace has been jailed for a maximum of three years in Newcastle District Court.
Tane Robert St John Morton, 20, and two friends were drinking on a night in May last year when he pulled out a .22 calibre pump action rifle and suggested they all go rabbit shooting.
But a short time later, after the three men had loaded into a car and were headed for nearby bushland, St John Morton leaned out the back window and fired three shots into a home in Benjamin Lee Drive.
If the cracks in the middle of the night came as a shock to the sleeping residents of Raymond Terrace, they were a bolt from the blue for the two other men inside the car with St John Morton, who later told police they had no idea he planned to shoot up a house. Incredibly, those at the house peppered with bullets slept through the whole thing.
St John Morton pleaded guilty to firing a firearm at a house with disregard for safety and possession of an unauthorised firearm in November.
And because the offence involved the discharge of a firearm, St John Morton was not eligible to receive an intensive correction order, a form of custodial sentence served in the community, and he was on Wednesday jailed for a maximum of three years, with a non-parole period of 18 months.
The prosecution last year withdrew the more serious charge against the other two men, accepting they had no knowledge of St John Morton's intention to shoot at the house, and they pleaded guilty to firearm possession offences.
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