A man who drove more than 15 kilometres through Hobart’s southern suburbs while fleeing police before being found hiding in a chicken coop has avoided jail.
Adam Dwayne Schultz, 41, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, evading police, three breaches of bail and driving while disqualified.
The incident happened on January 17, 2025. Schultz was disqualified from driving at the time and was on bail conditions that banned him from getting behind the wheel.
Police started looking for his car after a man reported seeing him driving in a “bizarre manner”.
When officers tried to pull him over, Schultz took off. He sped through residential streets at up to 90km/h in a 50km/h zone, overtook cars on the verge and tailgated other drivers.
He drove more than 15 kilometres in total, weaving through heavy traffic on the Southern Outlet and swerving twice to avoid police road spikes.
Police eventually punctured his tyres, but Schultz kept driving on the flats before dumping the car on Woodcutters Road at Tolmans Hill and running into nearby bushland.
Officers found him a short time later hiding in a chicken coop on a neighbouring property.
Schultz admitted he had been using drugs that day and claimed he had “blacked out”. He said he had been “doing a lot of crazy s–t lately”.
Justice Tamara Jago said the risks posed by his driving “hardly need to be stated” and it was fortunate no serious crash occurred.
But she said there was strong evidence Schultz had reformed.
He had completed rehab, stayed drug-free for more than 12 months, found work as a warehouse operator and started a new relationship.
Jago said returning him to prison risked “undermining” those changes.
She sentenced him to a 15-month home detention order with electronic monitoring, taking into account two months already served and disqualified him from driving for two years.
The Supreme Court judge warned him that breaching the order would almost certainly send him back to prison.
“Mr Schultz, you must clearly understand that a home detention order is a type of imprisonment. It is imprisonment within your own home,” Jago said.
She said the consequences would be “most serious” if he breached the conditions of the order.
“Given your history of prior criminal offending, that is almost an inevitable outcome in my view, if you do not take up this opportunity that is now being offered to you,” she said.
