FIRE AND ICE DON’T MIX
ARSONISTS JAILED
THE arsonists who torched a Bannockburn business days after it was raided by police, leaving a $450,000 bill, were jailed yesterday.
Norlane’s Max Forti and Wesley Hargreaves, of Corio, were locked up for lighting the fire at Golden Plains Self Storage on March 29 last year.
Like their accomplice Max Corey, the pair pleaded guilty to arson.
However, the drug dealer who Forti alleges ordered the business be razed has not been charged.
Judge Richard Smith said Forti, a 43-year-old former tow truck driver, was 20 years older than his co-offenders, and likely “would have been the principal in this arson offence”.
Addicted to ice since 2013, the man’s leading role in the act and long criminal record resulted in a jail term of 2½ years with non-parole period of two years.
Hargreaves and Corey met Forti through their mutual interest in drugs, the court heard.
While Hargreaves’s lawyers argued he knew nothing of the plan to burn the buildings and did not light the match, Judge Smith said he was in the building when it started and would have understood what was going on.
“I accept you were part and parcel of the arson,” the judge said. “You would have had no misunderstanding as to what was about to happen.”
The judge said Hargreaves had an “appalling” record of committing crimes and breaking court orders, given he was only 23.
“For a person your age, your previous convictions are little short of astounding,” he said.
Hargreaves was given a 14month jail term, which will be followed by a three-year community corrections order that will ensure he is supervised, drug-tested and must stay in Victoria.
Corey pleaded guilty to his part in the offence last year and was jailed for 12 months.
Judge Smith said Forti and Hargreaves pleaded guilty on the day their trial was to start.
He surmised this reflected the strength of the prosecution’s case against them, rather than a sudden pang of remorse.
At their plea hearing, the court heard Forti and his drug dealer rented units at the Bannockburn storage facility under false names, and their units were raided by police less than a week before the fire.
Prosecutor Michael Sharpley said it appeared the drug dealer’s “fingerprints are all over it”, and alleged Forti was trying to destroy evidence that implicated himself in crimes.
“It’s hard to see what he (the dealer) could have been charged with,” Mr Sharpley said. “He was nowhere to be seen.”
Time already served in custody by Forti (444 days) and Hargreaves (272) will count towards their respective jail terms.