Jail term for woman who forced man to drive her at knifepoint after two armed robbery attempts in newsagency

A Great Southern woman who attempted to rob a newsagency and one of its customers at knifepoint before carjacking a 68-year-old man and forcing him to drive her to a pub 20km away, has been jailed. Roxanne Elizabeth Thorne was sentenced in Albany District Court for a “persistent” course of offending on December 30, 2024, that included aggravated armed robbery and making a threat with intent to compel someone to do an act he was lawfully entitled to abstain from doing. At about 3.50pm, the then-41-year-old entered Clarks Newsagency on York Street and asked the owner of the store for a 1.5L bottle of Coke, to which he replied they didn’t stock that size. After leaving for a couple of minutes, she returned and placed a can of Coke and bottle of Gatorade on the counter before walking behind the counter, and brandishing a box cutter with its blade exposed, opened the till, telling the owner “don’t stop me”. The owner managed to push the till closed before she could take any money and pushed her away. As she left the store, she bumped into a customer and took his wallet containing $100 cash and some cards from his hand. When he tried to get it back, she swung at him with the box cutter and said “let me go or I will cut you”. The victim and his wife chased her up York Street until he managed to push her to the ground and retrieve his wallet and one of the two $50 notes in it. After the man left her go, she approached a parked vehicle and got into the front passenger seat. She said to the driver of the vehicle, a 68-year-old man, that the previous victim was going to beat her up, and that he needed to drive her away quickly or she would stab him. Thorne demanded the driver take her to the Elleker Tavern, a destination located about 20km away, threatening him with violence if he did not drive quickly. When they arrived at the tavern, she demanded he give her the car keys, to which he replied there were none as the car was a push-start. She then ran out of the car towards the tavern and left the driver to report the matter to police. In October last year she pleaded guilty to attempted armed robbery, armed robbery and two counts of making a threat with intent to compel someone to do an act that he was lawfully entitled to abstain from doing. In his sentencing remarks on February 23, Judge Staude said Thorne was on bail, a court order and intoxicated during the offending, which he said lasted about half an hour. “The offending as a whole is aggravated by its persistence and the fact that there were three direct victims and two secondary victims in (the robbery victim’s wife) and (the newsagent owner’s colleague),” he said. He said the 68-year-old driver was traumatised by the carjacking experience and had required depression medication, and trauma counselling after the event. “He described the personal history that you gave him while you were in his car as itself quite traumatising and that history has been recounted by your counsel today and I accept that it describes a life which has been full of bereavement and adversity and disadvantage,” Judge Staude said. He sentenced Thorne to three years jail, backdated to December 30, 2024. She will be eligible for parole after serving 18 months.