A woman armed herself with a kitchen knife and robbed a service station after she lost a game of scissors, paper, rock to her boyfriend, a court has heard.
Nicole Jane Shoebridge, 25, and her partner had been drinking cask wine and discussing their financial situation in January this year when he told her “our next best bet is to rob a servo”.
Sentencing her in the District Court, Judge Paul Slattery said they played the game to decide who should commit the offence.
“You lost that game,” he said in remarks published online.
“Your relationship with your boyfriend was such that you did whatever he said to do and vice versa.
“Your initial thought of the game was that it was a joke. You did not think that you would really do it.”
However, the pair decided to rob a service station at Camden Park, in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, which was near his home.
Later that night, while under the influence of alcohol and GHB, Shoebridge armed herself with a steak knife and held up the store.
She pointed the weapon at the attendant, made off with $500 and used the money to buy a bus ticket to Melbourne, Judge Slattery said.
But she turned herself in to a police station in Melbourne about a week later and was extradited back to South Australia.
Before sentencing, she told a psychologist that her actions were childish and immature and admitted the experience would have been “freaky” for the victim.
Judge Slattery said the worker was left “very traumatised” by the holdup.
“In spite of his best efforts to continue in his job, he has been unable to do so as a result of the stress that your offending has caused him,” he said.
Shoebridge pleaded guilty to aggravated committing theft using force and a count of dishonestly taking property without consent, which related to a separate incident when she stole from a supermarket.
Judge Slattery sentenced her to three years, seven months behind bars, with a non-parole period of one year, 10 months.
The sentence was backdated to February when she was taken into custody.
Extracted from The Australian