Joshua Sinclair Hair (30) was jailed for three years, Damion Donald Mills (41) got two years four months’ and 30-year-old getaway driver Matthew Craig Corkill was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment when they appeared in the Dunedin District Court this week.
It started on August 2 last year when Hair called his associates and proposed “a show of force” at a chemist and car yard in South Dunedin.
The court heard both businesses were owned by the same man, who later said he had no idea why he had been targeted by the defendants.
Two weeks after Hair’s call, the trio travelled to King Edward St where they entered a pharmacy and demanded to see the owner.
They were “abusive” to staff, court documents said, and were eventually persuaded to leave.
The group then made the short drive to a car dealership where the aggressive behaviour became more overt.
Hair and Mills entered the office while Corkill remained in a Ford outside.
They demanded keys for specific cars and asked the hapless salesman where the cash was kept.
Mills pulled out a Taser and activated it to stress the urgency of their request.
The two defendants then knocked the victim to the ground and cornered him in the back of the office.
Hair punched him five times and they threatened to kill him should he not comply, the court heard.
The assailants then realised they were being captured by CCTV and after making a brief bid to disable the cameras, demanded the keys for a late model Holden and Volkswagen.
The victim claimed he could not open the specific vehicles.
The defendants were unconvinced, so he headed outside and offered to prove it.
Once they were all outdoors, however, the victim ran off, leaving the defendants empty-handed.
They left together the way they had arrived and it was only hours before police apprehended them.
Officers pulled Hair and Corkill over that night and found the black Taser in the glove box.
Mills was arrested at home shortly afterwards.
As a result, police analysed Hair’s cellphone data and found he had sold 8g of methamphetamine in the preceding three weeks.
He was also sentenced for driving while disqualified and possessing morphine.
Like his co-defendants, the attempted aggravated robbery came shortly after Hair had been released from prison.
Judge Jim Large said the man’s background made for “very sad reading”.
Hair’s driving ban would end around the end of 2022, he said.
Mills put his role in the stick-up down to relapsing into alcohol use after a period of abstinence.
His counsel, Meg Scally, said her client had given up his gang ties and wanted a transfer to a prison near Hamilton to be close to his children.
Because of the time Corkill — who pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crime — spent behind bars awaiting sentencing, his release was imminent.
Among the release conditions imposed by the judge was a bar from associating with white-supremacist groups.
Corkill, the court heard, had expressed a desire to stay away from “skinheads”.
Judge Large opted not to disqualify him from driving, in the hope it would make employment easier to come by.
