A MAGISTRATE has warned a suspended Camperdown probationary driver he would serve a life prison sentence by instalments if he continued to drive without a licence.
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Warrnambool magistrate Peter Mellas made the comments while jailing Mark Anthony Tickner-Warrender, 22, for two months.
Mr Mellas said the defendant had a proven record of ignoring licence suspensions and court orders.
“He clearly doesn’t get it at all. He’s had fines, community corrections orders and suspended jail sentences, nothing’s worked,” Mr Mellas said.
“He’s a 22-year-old guy who wants to serve a life sentence by instalments. He just drives, just the same as the way he uses a phone or sits down for a meal. I’m left with no option other than jail.”
Mr Mellas said Tickner-Warrender received a suspended jail sentence in 2010 for burglary, but that was breached and enforced in 2012.
Tickner-Warrender was this week jailed for two months, convicted and fined $500 and his driver’s licence was cancelled for another six months.
Police said that at 10.30am on October 30 last year Tickner-Warrender was caught unlicensed driving along Camperdown’s Manifold Street in a red Toyota.
At the end of December he was intercepted again in Terang’s High Street while his P-plate licence was suspended due to demerit points. He also took nine batteries from in front of a service station, traded them for scrap and received $32.
Tickner-Warrender told police he thought the batteries were abandoned.
Defence counsel Matt Senia said his client was now living outside Camperdown and caring for his father who had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
He said Tickner-Warrender previously had a drug habit.