A Hastings man who carried out three armed and masked early-morning raids on people's homes has been sentenced to six years' jail.
Appearing in Napier District Court on Friday was 26-year-old Anthony James Gerbes, who admitted aggravated burglaries at a house in McHardy St, Havelock North, on November 15, a house in Menin Rd, Napier, on November 28, and a house in Pakowhai Rd, north of Hastings, on November 30.
The guilty pleas reduced what would have been an eight-year sentence by 25 per cent, Judge Geoff Rea said.
The Judge also imposed a minimum non-parole term of 3 years for the offences, which were this week also admitted by co-offender Richard Neil Rameka, 22, who is now in custody awaiting sentence on February 18.
Gerbes also admitted charges of intentional damage and using documents to obtain pecuniary advantage, relating to the damaging of phones and lines to try to stop victims calling for help and the use of banks cards taken in the raids.
Significant features were that the pair carried with them rope and masking tape, armed themselves with weapons such as a sledgehammer, mallets, and lengths of timber, and fled each raid by taking keys from the houses and stealing vehicles from the properties.
Judge Rea said statements Rameka made claiming he did not want to hurt an 82-year-old man who confronted the pair in the Pakowhai Rd house would have meant little to the victim, whose 78-year-old wife was also in the house. Gerbes' silence throughout would also have been no reassurance.
They were targeted raids on vulnerable people, particularly the Pakowhai Rd burglary in which the men would have been aware of the ages of the victims and the limited prospect of resistance.
Judge Rea said another disturbing feature was that there were people in Hastings who were prepared to receive the stolen goods from the pair as soon as they had been taken.
The $30,000 Volkswagen taken in the first raid had not been recovered, and other property including a laptop computer and a set of golf clubs was still missing. Some stolen items were found in searches of the burglars' homes.
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