A man who stole a pork roast during a terrifying home invasion while a mother was alone with her three children has received a 12-month prison sentence.
Steven Laurie Russell Dear pleaded guilty in the WA District Court to aggravated burglary and stealing.
The court heard Dear broke into a home in the Kalgoorlie suburb of Lamington while a mother and her three children were inside.
Dear walked through the house and into the kitchen where he helped himself to a pork roast from the freezer before he left.
While he was spared a sentence for stealing the pork roast, Judge Karen Ann Shepard did impose a 12-month sentence on Dear for the more serious charge of aggravated burglary.
Judge Shepard said Dear just walked through an unlocked door while the victim was sitting in her lounge room.
“It’s pretty frightening for her to just have you kind of work through the front door without being allowed to be inside her property,” she said.
“You then walked through the home and went into her freezer, and you removed the frozen pork leg roast and you left about five minutes later through a back door.
“You hid the pork under your jumper and ultimately you were arrested.”
The court heard Dear had been out drinking that day when he went looking for cigarettes or cigarette butts and that it was an opportunistic chance for him to find something.
Judge Shepard said people were entitled to feel safe at home.
“It’s scary for a woman to be inside the house by herself and it’s very scary for her to be inside her house by herself with her children there,” she said.
“So I accept that, you know, she was frightened and that’s completely normal.”
Dear’s sentence was backdated to the time he was taken into custody on May 1 last year, so he is now eligible for parole.