Knife wielding thief on parole

Man had stabbed before

DYLAN John Cruse had been out of jail for only a month after attempting to murder his aunty, with a knife in the neck, when he reoffended.

The youth had just spent more than three years in custody when he entered Dino Pizza at Risdon Vale, wearing a hockey mask and blue latex gloves.

The 26-year-old faced the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Monday after previously pleading guilty to the March 2019 armed robbery.

Crown prosecutor Deanne Earley said the 29-year-old Dino Pizza employee walked from the back of the store to find Cruse holding a large kitchen knife.

Cruse then asked the worker to hand over all the money from the till, notes only, before instructing him to smash the CCTV and to hand over all the phones in the store.

He asked the man if anyone else was in the store – and the worker replied his fiancee was out the back and she was pregnant. Cruse instructed the pair to lie on the floor before fleeing on foot.

A member of the public found the knife the next day, about 400m from the scene.

Ms Earley said when police apprehended Cruse, he told them he’d run out of money and “thought the best thing to do was rob a pizza shop”.

Ms Earley said the worker’s fiancee claimed to have suffered a “serious psychological injury” from the robbery.

“It was a terrifying ordeal for the complainants,” she said, adding Cruse had only been released from jail on parole in February that year.

Defence barrister Robert Fisher said Cruse was intellectually challenged, had mental health concerns, and that his offending may be related to his mental functioning.

“While he understood what he was doing was wrong, his understanding of the effect on the impacts was limited,” he said. Mr Fisher said Cruse now understood the effects of his crime upon the victims.

The Mercury previously reported that in December 2015, Cruse stabbed his aunty in the neck after trying the drug ice for the first time in Ulverstone.

Cruse plunged the blade into the right side of her neck, immediately fleeing the scene and leaving his aunt to remove the knife hanging from her neck.

Cruse pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was jailed for five and a half years, with a non-parole period of two years and nine months.

He will return to court over the armed robbery on November 16.