Four people involved in a violent robbery that started with a man seeking sex online and ended with a sword blow to the head should be given full-time jail terms, a Crown Prosecutor has told a court.
Mitchell Neil Sullivan, Corey Hicks, Adam Shortland and Alexandra Dwyer pleaded guilty last October to robbery in company over the attack at the Cardiff home of a 48-year-old man in January 2020.
They will be sentenced in Newcastle District Court next month, after a sentencing hearing before Judge Tim Gartelmann, SC, on Thursday.
The man was lured with the promise of a sexual encounter on an online classifieds website in the early hours of the morning.
The court heard that Dwyer entered the man's home while her driver, Sullivan, and their friends Hicks and Shortland waited in a car outside.
When the man's pants were around his ankles, Dwyer sent a text message to the trio and told them to come inside.
Hicks struck the 48-year-old in the head with an ornamental sword, fracturing his skull and leaving him needing 13 stitches, while Dwyer took $650 from a drawer in the man's bedroom - cash he had shown her when she arrived.
Dwyer, Hicks, Sullivan and Shortland then went to a pub, where they used the money for drinking and gambling.
In court on Thursday, Dwyer gave testimony that she was remorseful over the incident and apologised to the victim.
But Crown Prosecutor Kristy Mulley rejected submissions from her lawyer calling for her to be given an Intensive Corrections Order rather than a full-time jail term, questioning Dwyer's repeated claim from the witness box that she could not remember much of the evening.
Ms Mulley said Dwyer provided the "gateway into the victim's home" - she had asked him to leave the wooden front door open, put the 48-year-old in a "vulnerable position" and then called the three men into the property.
Ms Mulley said a text message Dwyer sent to Sullivan before the incident - which said "Make ure (sic) thos (sic) boys understand we are about to robb (sic) this c--- at his home. He's alone waiting for me. He has cash." - showed that Dwyer had taken the three men to the Cardiff home with the intention of robbing the 48-year-old.
They will be sentenced on September 3.
