By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A man who pleaded guilty to breaking into staff lockers at a Fountain Gate business and stealing mobile phones has been jailed.
Daniel Bogar, 37, had bent the locker doors open to steal two phones, an iPod and a wallet with a bank card and university student card about 6pm on 29 July, 2016, a court heard.
The goods, valued at $1700, were not recovered upon Bogar’s arrest four months later.
“I knew this was going to come back and bite me,” Bogar said during his “no-comment” police interview.
Bogar had also pleaded guilty to stealing two laptops and a phone valued at $8500 from a closed mobile-phone stall at Waverley Gardens Shopping Centre on 15 March.
Bogar also pleaded guilty to driving suspended, and possessing a 50-centimetre wooden baton and a knife in his car in Beaconsfield in November.
He told police that he’d found the baton in hard rubbish and was going to use it as a stand at home.
In August, police found Bogar in a car in a Mulgrave reserve with a syringe cap in his hand and an ear bleeding due to a recent syringe injection.
In the car was a quantity of ice and suspected stolen goods including two phones and a laptop.
He was also charged with drug possession after found slumped behind a steering wheel in a Dandenong North street on 9 April.
Bogar’s lawyer told Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 10 April that the accused had been struggling since released from jail in March 2016 – having been returned to custody for breaching parole.
The unemployed methadone user had significant criminal history and had been on two previous drug treatment orders, the lawyer said.
“He says he could do with some help.”
Bogar underscored this in telling the court: “Every time I’m released from prison, I’m not getting any help.”
Magistrate Barry Schultz, in jailing Bogar for six months followed by a corrections order, said “plainly no one is beyond redemption”.
The corrections order would last 18 months.
