Jail reprieve for guns find

A HOBART man has avoided jail after police raided his home and found AFP and Tasmania Police badges in a doll’s house and sawn-off shotguns in his washing machine.

Damian John Lipscombe, 40, appeared in the Hobart Magistrates Court on Friday and pleaded guilty to a number of guns, weapon and drug charges.

Magistrate Reg Marron heard that on February 24, 2019, police attended Lipscombe’s Chigwell home and found shotgun shells in his bedroom along with diazepam and other prescription drugs and a crossbow.

Inside his washing machine, police found a double-barrel shotgun inside a grocery bag and a sawn-off double barrel shotgun inside a pillow case.

In a doll’s house in Lipscombe’s home, officers found an Australia Federal Police badge and two Tasmania Police badges.

Police also found five cannabis plants.

The court was told when questioned by police, Lipscombe said he grew the plants from seeds and planned to make butter from them.

He said this was to selfmanage pain associated with a motorbike accident a few years prior.

Lipscombe’s defence lawyer said the guns didn’t belong to him – and that he’d only come in possession of them the previous day, having taken them off a friend who he thought would use them to cause harm.

He also said Lipscombe didn’t intend to use the police badges outside the doll’s house, and that he had post traumatic stress disorder after giving evidence at a murder trial a few years prior.

“The crossbow didn’t have a working trigger mechanism so it wasn’t able to fire any arrows,” the lawyer added.

Mr Marron said he didn’t believe Lipscombe’s guns excuse.

“I don’t believe for a single minute you got possession of these the day before – sawn-off guns in washing machines,” he said.

Lipscombe was given a sixmonth jail sentence, wholly suspended for three years.