Trio guilty of Gowrie robbery

THREE of four people charged with the armed robbery of a Gowrie Junction convenience store have been found guilty.

Carlos Clinton Booth, 29, Jake Aaron Hearn, 20, and Leniece Leigh Combarngo, 34, will be sentenced at a later date after their respective barristers asked for an adjournment so relevant reports on their clients could be obtained before sentence.

The trio and a juvenile boy, who was 16 at the relevant time and so cannot be named, had each pleaded not guilty before Toowoomba District Court to a charge of armed robbery in company arising from the August 2, 2015, robbery.

The juvenile, now 17, was found not guilty by the jury which deliberated for eight hours after a trial that lasted almost two weeks.

Crown prosecutor Judy Geary had shown CCTV footage from the Gowrie One Stop Convenience Store depicting three disguised people wearing gloves bursting into the store about 7.30pm and demanding money.

Two of the culprits were carrying guns, one a silver handgun and the other armed with a larger brown rifle.

During the trial, the jury was shown a photograph of Hearn holding a brown rifle similar to that seen in the footage.

The store’s cash register was emptied by the intruders who left when demands to open the shop safe were thwarted when the teenage male store attendant said he had no key for the safe.

The Crown case was that Combarngo waited outside the store in a car and was in fact the get-away driver.

Judge Richard Jones adjourned sentence to a date to be set and remanded all three in custody.