Teenager lasted just hours on parole

A TOOWOOMBA teenager had committed a robbery just hours after being released from the city’s Magistrates Court on an immediate parole order.

Tyrese William Anthony Weribone was sentenced to nine months in jail but released on immediate parole on November 3, 2021, after pleading guilty to stealing $85 from Quilt Craft which breached a seven-month suspended jail term that was activated.

However, just hours later the then 19-year-old and four youths had surrounded a 14year-old boy on the street in Toowoomba’s CBD and demanded his backpack and Nike shoes, Toowoomba District Court heard.

Weribone and a juvenile had then grabbed the victim’s bag and he ran away chased by another 15-year-old boy.

Crown prosecutor Shontelle Petrie told the court when that boy caught up with the victim child he punched him twice to the head, knocking him to the ground, and stole his shoes.

That 15-year-old took the boy’s phone and threw it onto a nearby roof, she said.

The incident was captured on CCTV, Ms Petrie said.

Weribone was spoken to by police the next day and made certain admissions to the crime and had been held in custody since, initially serving out his previous sentence before being held in custody until sentence, some 38 days.

Weribone, who turned 20 in jail last month, pleaded guilty to a robbery in company with personal violence.

Ms Petrie said all up, Weribone had spent 249 days in custody since his arrest.

However, since he committed this offence while on parole, he could only be given a parole eligibility date and not a parole release date, she said.

Weribone’s barrister Jens Streit told the court his client was very remorseful for his offending which his client described as a “spur of the moment stupidity”.

His client claimed he was in “a bad headspace” at the time but during his eight months in custody had time to reflect.

Weribone had completed the “Positive Futures” course and had been working in the prison kitchen, he said.

“This is not the man who went to jail eight months ago,” Mr Streit submitted to the court.

Mr Streit asked that his client be sentenced to a suspended term of imprisonment after doing another two or three months in custody.

However, Judge Jennifer Rosengren said Weribone would require supervision when he returned to the community.

Judge Rosengren sentenced Weribone to two and a half years in jail but, declaring 38 days pre-sentence as time served, ordered he be eligible to apply for release on parole forthwith.