A man has been jailed for threatening to slit a Launceston service station worker’s throat with a glass bottle during a robbery – less than three years after he held up the same store at gunpoint.
Sharn Luke Rehrmann, 31, was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Tasmania last week after pleading guilty to robbery.
The court heard that just after 5pm on June 21, 2024, Rehrmann walked into the BP service station at Youngtown and asked the 24-year-old male attendant for cigarettes and a lighter.
When the worker asked him to pay, Rehrmann told him to hand over the items or he would grab a glass bottle and slit his throat.
The worker pressed the duress alarm. Rehrmann repeated the threat, took the cigarettes and a lighter and walked out.
He was arrested a short time later and “largely admitted” what he had done, Justice Robert Pearce said.
“You told the police that you had waited outside smoking the cigarettes until they arrived,” the judge said.
The court heard Rehrmann had robbed the same store in October 2021, that time wearing a motorcycle helmet and pointing a handgun at the attendant.
He was jailed for two years over that armed robbery.
Justice Pearce said both crimes were driven by drug use, but that did not make them any less serious.
“It may well add to the need for general deterrence so that others may think twice before acting in this way,” he said.
Justice Pearce said the worker, like almost every victim of such a crime, had been traumatised.
Rehrmann was sentenced to two years in prison from May 8, 2026, with no parole.
Justice Pearce suspended 12 months of the sentence for 18 months, with conditions including supervision and drug and alcohol treatment.
Rehrmann was also ordered to pay $44.57 in compensation to the service station.
