Those were the words spoken by Jordan Robert Higgins after he was tackled by a Shepparton bike shop owner and a customer while trying to steal a bike last year.
Higgins, 27, of Shepparton, pleaded guilty in the County Court to attempted armed robbery and committing an indictable offence while on bail.
Prosecutor Cara Foot told the court Higgins tried to steal a Haro BMX bike from High St Cycles about 3.40pm on December 14 last year.
Higgins took hold of the bike and raised a piece of wood with a nail sticking out of it at the shop owner while saying that he was taking the bike.
After hearing the commotion, another customer in the workshop at the back of the store came into the store and he and the shop owner tacked Higgins, who lifted the front of his shirt and said “I’ve got a revolver”, Ms Foot said.
The court was told the shop owner could see the handle of the firearm tucked into the front of Higgins’ pants and Higgins had his hands on the handle.
Unknown to the two men, the gun was an imitation firearm.
The trio began wrestling, and during this time Higgins removed the imitation gun and the customer punched him before taking it off him, the prosecutor said.
A third man who was passing the store stopped to help and the trio subdued Higgins.
When police arrived, Higgins was bleeding heavily after being punched multiple times in the head by the customer.
At hospital Higgins was treated from a broken nose and fractured eye socket.
A victim impact statement by the shop owner, read to the court, heard how he had experienced anxiety with people entering his shop wearing masks and hoodies since the incident, as that was what Higgins was wearing at the time.
He also said he felt “anxious and vulnerable” while working alone in the shop.
Higgins’ barrister Kate Ballard asked for a combination sentence that would include some prison time as well as a community corrections order.
Ms Ballard asked if her client could be allowed out of custody by June 28 to take up a bed offer at residential drug rehabilitation centre Odyssey House.
By then he will have spent six months and two weeks already in prison.
Ms Ballard acknowledged the gravity of the offence, but said the first time the store owner saw the imitation gun is when her client lifted his shirt, rather than being a case of him pointing it at the victim.
She also told the court the customer in the shop struck Higgins with the gun after he took it off him, and both the shop owner and the customer punched him when they had him on the ground.
She called the customer’s actions “excessive”.
“There is a lot of blood,” Ms Ballard said.
Ms Ballard said being punched by the men was an “anxiety-inducing experience” for her client and that police camera footage showed her client tell an officer he had “self-defecated”.
“That is humiliating and occurred during him being beaten,” she said.
While she admitted Higgins had a part to play in what happened because of his earlier actions, she asked the judge to take into account the injuries he had sustained.
Ms Ballard also told the court her client had started abusing alcohol and cannabis regularly from the age of 13 or 14, and later started using methamphetamines and this had “remained a significant issue” for him.
She also said he was using unprescribed Lyrica at the time.
Judge Mark Gamble ordered a Community Corrections Order assessment be done on Higgins, but said “nothing should be read into this one way or another”.
The case will return to court on Thursday.
19°C