Offender’s last chance

Judge goes against officer’s advice

GOING against the recommendation of a Department of Probation and Parole officer who said he wasn’t suitable for further community based orders, a Toowoomba magistrate has given a 24year-old repeat offender “one last chance”.

Daniel David Joseph Wann had not been engaging with his 12-month probation order which had been imposed by the Toowoomba Magistrates

Court in December last year for drug and property offences, the probation officer told the court.

And now he was back before the same court pleading guilty to similar offences including having a fixed 7.5cm (three inch) bladed knife in his underpants when challenged by police at the Blue Mountain Hotel in the early hours of November 21, possessing a “bong” for smoking cannabis and a small amount of the party drug ecstasy on October 23, and having a small amount of cannabis, two pipes for smoking it and scales for weighing it found during a police search of a Wilsonton residence on August 1.

All those offences were committed while Wann was subject to the 12-month probation order.

He had breached other orders and a suspended jail sentence in the past, the court heard.

However, his solicitor Brad Skuse, of David Burns Lawyers, told the court his client had been doing fairly well on the probation order up until May when he lost his accommodation and, being homeless, things had gone downhill for him.

Mr Skuse asked the court to give his client a further term of probation to help get him back on track.

Magistrate Damian Carroll said the 24-year-old seemed to struggle when he became homeless and that he would give him “the benefit of the doubt”.

“I’ll give him one last chance,” he said.

Mr Carroll placed Wann on 18 months probation to include random testing for the use of illicit drugs with any positive drug test to be deemed a breach of the order which would put him back before the court.