By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A BERWICK man was refused bail after being allegedly found with 800 millilitres of the drug GHB concealed in his vehicle’s boot in Narre Warren on Sunday.
In a Dandenong Magistrates’ Court bail hearing on Monday, police said they found the “purple coloured liquid with… silver coloured glitter floating in it” in a one-litre bottle inside an unregistered purple Commodore.
The driver, Dean Sykes – who was out on bail at the time for possessing ‘ice’ and driving while disqualified – then allegedly told them he had been using it as window cleaner and was unaware that it was a drug.
He was charged with trafficking GHB, driving while disqualified and possessing the proceeds of crime – in the form of $2755 in cash allegedly found in his wallet.
In court, informant Constable Margaret Czarka of Dandenong police presented some of the “hundreds” of text-message conversations found on Sykes’s mobile phone which she said suggested that he was trafficking ‘Gina’, the street name for gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB).
Sykes, who represented himself, told the court he was in counselling and wanted to go into rehab.
“I’m going to… get myself sorted and move on from this,” he said.
He said up to “a couple of weeks ago” he’d been “going good” on a community corrections order – received on top of a jail term in May over 45 offences including trafficking ‘ice’.
The court was told Sykes had prior convictions for possessing an unregistered handgun, ammunition without a licence, traffic offences and recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime.
“Any chance of house arrest?” he asked the court.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen replied: “Unfortunately not.”
Mr Vandersteen said Sykes was an unacceptable risk of reoffending while already being on bail, had been recently jailed over similar offences and had already being treated as part of a “rehabilitative” corrections order.
Sykes was remanded in custody to appear at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 10 December.
