George Edwin Jones claims he’d been awake for 17 days on a cocktail of methamphetamine, heroin and alcohol when he thought an innocent man who owned a motorcycle was a member of a rival bikie club that he is perpetually at war with.
That was the explanation that Jones, a 34-year-old career criminal and head of the Down to Ride club, provided in Newcastle District Court on Thursday while trying to justify why the man was subjected to a traumatic 12-hour abduction, during which he was driven around Newcastle and forced to withdraw cash, threatened with a pistol, repeatedly bashed to the point where he lost consciousness, tied up in the shower, injected with ice and repeatedly threatened that he was going to be killed.
The man’s house was ransacked and his car and motorcycle were stolen. At one point, while he was tied up, the man heard Jones and his other kidnappers talking about whether or not they should murder him in the backyard.
“I am actually trying hard to imagine a worse case scenario,” Judge Penelope Wass, SC, said on Thursday.
“Genuinely I am struggling to imagine one.”
The victim, who has no ties to outlaw motorcycle clubs, had answered a personal ad on a website advertising “sexual encounters” and picked up his date from Hamilton railway station on August 25, 2018.
The pair had a couple of drinks, but when the woman, who said her name was “Sarah”, tried to initiate sex he said he wasn’t interested. The girl offered to invite her friends over for group sex and eventually a group of people came over to the house.
But the victim knew he was in trouble when Jones began demanding money.
“You owe her $500 for coming here for sex,” Jones said, pointing at another one of the girls. Jones then punched the victim to the ground and kicked him in the stomach.
He tried to flee, but Jones followed him outside, threw him to the ground and said: “I’ll bash your f—ing skull in if you try to leave”.
Jones then made the victim drive him and one of the girls into Newcastle, where he ordered him to drive down a dark alley and said to the girl: “your choice, your money, we can let him bleed out here if you want”.
Jones then drove around making the victim withdraw money from ATMs and forced him to pay for a large amount of fast food.
Jones, who pleaded guilty to specially aggravated detain in company and cause actual bodily harm, will be sentenced on 6th of March 2020.
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Source: Newcatle Herald