Three young men have been jailed for their parts in a failed plot to rob a Napier service station.
Appearing for sentence in the Napier District Court yesterday, Raymond Daniel Jones, 24, was sentenced to three years, and Noel Te Wai Raki, 18, was sentenced to two years and three months,
a result of a jury finding the men guilty on a charge of conspiring to rob the Mobil Mart in Taradale Road on the night of September 5 last year.
Jones had also previously pleaded guilty to two charges of dishonest use of two motor vehicles used in the plan, and one charge each of dangerous driving and failing to stop for police.
Raki had denied two charges of dishonest use of the vehicles, but was found guilty.
The third man, Te Rapuwai Sonny Chase, 23, was found not guilty of the conspiracy but guilty of dishonest use of one of the vehicles and on a charge of theft of items from one of the cars and was sentenced to nine months' jail.
A fourth member of their group, 23-year-old Daniel Kauahi Tapara, was sentenced to two years and three months in jail after pleading guilty last year.
The four had travelled from Hastings to Napier earlier in the night and were, Judge Tony Adeane said, apparently "cruising" when the plan to rob the lone attendant at the station was made.
It had involved the planned use of violence, and the Judge said as was the case with numerous poorly-planned raids of its type, it could easily have resulted in serious harm being caused.
As it was, he said, Jones' driving as the group fled after being spotted by the suspicious attendant who locked himself inside the station before the men could enter, was a danger to others.
The car was chased by a police patrol through the Onekawa Industrial District and eventually spun-out, and the men were captured in the vicinity.
