‘Mad’ drug habit fuelled crimes

A PRISONER who headbutted a Risdon Prison guard, causing his face to bruise and swell, has pleaded guilty to assaulting a public officer and a raft of other charges.

Jake Paul Moltoni appeared in the Burnie Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the violence towards the prison officer happened as Moltoni was being moved from the visitor room in the maximum security part of the prison back to his cell.

The prison officer was taken to Calvary Hospital with bruising and swelling to the face and needed to take time off work.

Moltoni, who appeared via video link from the jail, also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault stemming from an incident where he pointed a sawnoff shotgun at a woman in a carpark in Burnie.

Magistrate Tamara Jago committed Moltoni to the Supreme Court for sentence on that matter.

He pleaded guilty to an extra charge of reckless driving relating to that incident after he chased the woman’s car through Burnie’s city streets and past pedestrians who were milling outside a popular latenight hotel.

The court heard Moltoni went through a red light in pursuit of the woman, who he thought was his ex-girlfriend.

He also pleaded guilty to threatening a police officer in Devonport.

The court heard Moltoni told the police officers he “would remember their faces” and shoot them when he got out of prison.

Moltoni told Magistrate Jago his offending was due to his drug addiction and he expressed interest in being involved in a court-mandated drug diversion program.

“I had a mad drug habit,” he said.

“Methylamphetamine, smack everything.”