Lance Cook pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to two counts of unlawful assault, threatening to inflict a serious injury, intentionally damaging property, attempted arson, two counts of committing an indictable offence while on bail and contravening a personal safety intervention order.
The court had earlier heard how Cook, who is aged in his early 30s, had gone to Cash Converters to return a phone with a broken screen on March 13, but the staff member would not allow it to be returned.
Cook threatened to return to the store with a gun, before he was moved on by police, the prosecutor said.
Thirty minutes later he returned to the store and told staff he would return with a firearm, while also making threatening motions with a bottle he was carrying.
The prosecutor said three months later, on June 11, Cook discovered the Cash Converters employee lived near his house and threw a rubbish bin through the window of their house on June 11.
The court heard the woman saw Cook standing in the woman’s front yard shouting “I’m gonna burn your house down”.
Prosecutor John McNamara told the court on November 5 at 2.20 am Cook went to the same woman’s house and shoved a rag in the exhaust of a car and lit it.
After the rag extinguished itself, Cook attempted to re-light it several times, before giving up and jumping on the roof and windscreen of the car, Mr McNamara said.
The roof was dented and the windscreen smashed in the attack which was captured on CCTV footage at the house, Mr McNamara said.
The magistrate sentenced Cook to four months in prison, with the 39 days pre-sentence custody counted as time already served.
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