Two armed men who forced a man to urinate on his partner and walk her like a dog while their children slept during a terrifying home invasion have been jailed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WARNING: This story contains descriptions of violence and threats of sexual assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joshua Snow, 29, and Joshua Day, who is in his 30s, pleaded guilty to a raft of offences over the 2023 attack in which they barged into the Maryborough home of a couple, brandishing sawn-off shotguns, to confront the woman about an alleged $5,000 debt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the violent attack, Snow ordered the man to tie an extension lead around his partner’s neck and walk her like a dog, before forcing him to urinate on her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard a child in an upstairs bedroom heard the commotion and messaged his father downstairs.<\/p>\n
Snow then walked upstairs and forced the man to tell the child, “Dad’s a bitch, he’s f***ed up.”<\/p>\n
County Court judge John Kelly described the violence as “cartoonishly gratuitous”.<\/p>\n
“Four children were in their beds when you burst in with sawn-off shotguns and bad intentions,” Judge Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Snow was jailed for 11 years and four months, with a seven-year non-parole period, while Day was sentenced to nine years and four months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of six years and six months. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Both men have already spent more than two and a half years in custody.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Drug-fuelled attack<\/p>\n
The court heard the two men had smoked methamphetamine before the attack on December 6, 2023.<\/p>\n
The woman was punched in the face multiple times and forced to sign over ownership of her car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Snow hacked at the man’s leg with a meat cleaver and stabbed him in the arm with a used syringe, the court heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After taking power tools from a shed in the backyard, Snow threatened to “burn the kids alive in the house while you watch” if they went to police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard another man, not related to the couple, was also home during the violent attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the attack, Snow threatened to have that man rape the female victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Kelly told the court two of the victims had since been diagnosed with PTSD and another had been admitted to a psychiatric ward after the crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The ripples of your crime spread to vulnerable children who were uprooted and forced to leave their homes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Your offending was liberally festooned with aggravating features. You humiliated and degraded [the woman and her partner].”<\/p>\n
Snow and Day pleaded guilty to charges including home invasion, extortion, false imprisonment, theft and assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The woman and her partner fled with their children and entered crisis accommodation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Kelly said Snow’s conduct was worse than Day’s.<\/p>\n
“You instigated the dog walk, threatened to have [the man] rape [the female victim] and threatened to burn her children,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the conduct of both men was “appalling and inexcusable” and found their respective psychological conditions and difficult upbringings “negligibly” reduced their moral culpability. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Others in the community need to know invading another home with sawn-off shotguns will cost you your freedom,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Kelly said both men had a history of “violent, anti-social offending” and described their prospects of rehabilitation as “dim”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard Day had appeared in court and been sentenced to jail every year from 2015 to 2023 on charges including false imprisonment, recklessly causing injury and firearm offences.<\/p>\n
Snow was also sentenced over an armed robbery he carried out in Maryborough a few weeks after the home invasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The court heard he swung a baseball bat with screws nailed in at a man who was not known to him and threatened to kill him if he did not empty his pockets, before taking his wallet and necklace during the attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Kelly credited the men for pleading guilty and sparing the victims giving evidence in a trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two armed men who forced a man to urinate on his partner and walk her like a dog…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,18218,31973,51359,8188,6969,10466,111012,21310,7117,111013],"class_list":["post-75490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-castlemaine","tag-county-court","tag-day","tag-home-invasion","tag-jail","tag-josh","tag-joshua-day","tag-maryborough","tag-snow","tag-urinate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}