A 57-year-old woman who admitted involvement in a savage Oaks Estate robbery is “too old” to keep committing crimes, a judge has told a court. Sharon Ann Stott was on Thursday sentenced to one year and seven months’ jail for aggravated robbery.
The sentence was suspended from Thursday, with Stott to remain behind bars for an unrelated matter. She would apply for bail on Friday, the court heard. Stott has served one year on remand in Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre for the Oaks Estate attack.
The court heard on January 10, 2019, Stott enlisted the help of four men – including the president of the ACT’s Satudarah motorcycle club, Dean Reid – to retrieve a gun from a former friend at a house in Oaks Estate.
Stott later told police she knew the man was using drugs, and “junkies should not have guns”, the court heard. She knew the man would not let her in his house because they’d had a falling out.
Stott drove Reid and three other co-offenders – David Micheal Evans, 33, Joshua Darcy Watson, 35, and Norman Collier, 26 – to the victim’s house, where Reid eventually convinced the man to open the door. He had armed himself with a kitchen knife in an attempt to defend himself, but as soon as the men gained entry, Reid disarmed him and held the knife to his throat.
Reid stabbed the man in the thigh, before Evans smashed an electric guitar into his leg several times. The man was left with a broken leg and a bleeding laceration.
Stott asked the victim, “Where are the f—ing guns?” before one of the men found parts of a firearm and handed them to her, the court heard. She wrapped them in a blanket, and the group left – Stott’s co-offenders taking more of the man’s possessions.
Stott and the four men pleaded guilty to their roles in the attack in November, 2019. The prosecution previously acknowledged Stott was not liable for the men’s assaults, but took advantage of the victim’s vulnerable state.
Her defence lawyer previously told the court she was motivated to take the victim’s gun by a long-held disdain for firearms, and did not know he would be assaulted.
On Thursday, Justice Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson told Stott it was “understandable” she had wanted to get the gun off the streets, but the way to do that was not through crime.
She said Stott’s offending was “serious” – regardless of her intent – and she should be able to recognise that by now.
Stott started committing crimes in her 30s, the court heard.
“You don’t want to go back to prison, and frankly, Ms Stott, you are too old for this,” Justice Loukas-Karlsson said. “Please spend the rest of your life trying to be a worthwhile role model for your sons. “You know it’s never too late for that.” Stott will have to comply with a 12-month good behaviour as part of her sentence.
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Source: Canberra Times