Teen jailed on burglary

A TEENAGER who broke into a rural property home and stole a gun safe containing three rifles has been sentenced to six months in jail.

Tristan Andy Cortes appeared via video link from Arthur Gorrie Correction Centre to plead guilty before Toowoomba Magistrates Court to a total of 16 offences including breaking into the home of a family known to him where he had previously stayed and stealing a gun safe with two shotguns and a .22 calibre rifle.

Also stolen was a number of power tools.

Police prosecutor Bettina Trenear said when spoken to by police about the burglary, the 19-year-old denied stealing the gun safe but said he had swapped the guns for meth.

Ms Trenear said police had seized Cortes’s mobile phone which, when analysed, showed the teenager had offered to source or supply drugs on about 25 occasions between September 1, 2021, and April 1, 2022.

Cortes told police he had dealt in drugs to support his own habit and hadn’t made any money out of it, she said.

Cortes also pleaded guilty to driving on Cunningham St, Dalby, on May 5, while disqualified by court order and to driving an unregistered, uninsured vehicle.

He had also been in a stolen vehicle seen by police near Kingaroy and ultimately pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a motor vehicle arising from that offence.

His solicitor Julia Molloy, of Skuse Graham Lawyers, told the court her client had not even smoked a cigarette by the time he was 18 but after a relationship breakdown and while he was in a vulnerable state, he had been offered some meth by a friend and became quickly addicted.

Ms Molloy said her client instructed the 70 days he had spent in pre-sentence custody had been the longest time he had been off the drug since and he was feeling much better.

Her client’s father had work in tree lopping and fencing waiting for him upon his release from custody and he would return to Dalby to live.

While in custody, Cortes had missed the birth of his first child who he hadn’t met yet, Ms Molloy said.

Magistrate Kay Philipson said the time in custody for a young man would have been difficult for him.

Declaring the 70 days as time served under the sentence, Ms Philipson sentenced Cortes to six months in jail but ordered he be released on parole immediately.

Cortes was ordered to pay $3000 restitution and he was disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence for two years.