By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A MAN smashed in a drivers-side window with a hockey stick while trying to help extract a drug debt from the driver in Berwick.
Dandenong Magistrates’ Court was told that Cameron Nicholas Ploeg, 24, was accompanying a friend to collect the debt when he caused a minor injury to the victim with the blow on 9 July.
The victim then got out of the car, leaving the keys behind and Ploeg and his friend drove off in the car.
It was found in Dandenong on 11 July.
Ploeg’s lawyer said the debt related to the accused’s friend, not the accused.
“It wasn’t his predetermined role to hit (the window)… it was a matter that evolved as it occurred.
“He thought it would be more frightful (if he hit the window).”
The accused had a “misspent youth” but his life had taken a “real turn” last November after being jailed for two months for breaching a community corrections order, his lawyer said.
During his jail term he was moved to four different jails and custody centres.
The term started three days after his daughter was born.
“He did it very hard. It’s a big wake-up call,” Ploeg’s lawyer said.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen handed Ploeg a three-month jail sentence, wholly suspended for 12 months.
Ploeg would have been immediately jailed if the hockey stick struck the victim in the face, he said.
Mr Vandersteen said crimes carried out while enforcing drug debt collections were usually not reported.
It showed that Ploeg was associating with drug users and traffickers.
“In the first two months of your child’s life you were in prison and that’s where your life is heading if you continue down that track.
“Those drug traffickers are not here to support you in court. It’s your family – they’re the ones here to stand by you.”
Ploeg was also ordered to pay restitution costs for the smashed window.
