A Tasmanian man who pointed a firearm at his partner’s mother and 15-year-old sister and threatened to shoot them has avoided immediate imprisonment.
Joel Keith Lomas, 28, was sentenced in the Supreme Court to 14 months’ jail, wholly suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to aggravated assault.
The court heard that on October 26, 2024, Lomas’s partner phoned her mother after an argument and asked to be picked up.
The woman drove to the home with her 15-year-old daughter.
When they pulled up outside, Lomas opened the front door, looked at the car, then went back inside. Seconds later, he reappeared holding a firearm.
He pointed it at the pair and said: “If you don’t f–king leave right now I am going to f–king shoot you.”
The teenager told her mother to drive away. They went around the corner and called police, but officers were unable to find the firearm and no charges were laid at the time.
The case was cracked open by Lomas himself. In May 2025, he sent the teenager a Snapchat message admitting he had sold the gun after “what I done because I never wanted anyone to feel that way again”.
She reported the message to police. Lomas initially claimed the weapon had been a replica gel blaster, but later admitted it was real.
Justice Tamara Jago said the threat had caused both victims serious psychological harm and that the teenager had “genuinely believed she was going to die”.
The judge said the sentence was “finely balanced”, citing Lomas’s guilty plea, minimal prior history and 12 months free of methamphetamine use.
She warned that any breach, should he be “foolish enough”, would likely mean serving the full term.
