A teenager who broke out of Tasmania’s Ashley Youth Detention Centre and robbed two overseas tourists at knifepoint the next morning has walked free from court with a suspended sentence.
The 17-year-old, who can only be identified as HR, pleaded guilty to aggravated armed robbery and was sentenced this month in the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
He was 16 when he escaped from Ashley, near Deloraine, on the evening of December 18, 2025, while on remand over unrelated matters.
The next morning, he and a 16-year-old accomplice targeted a 69-year-old woman and her 34-year-old son as they loaded luggage into a rental car in Penguin on the north-west coast.
The tourists, from the UK and the Netherlands, were confronted by one of the teenagers with a serrated bread knife about eight inches long.
The victims could not say which of the two was holding it.
The teenagers shouted at the pair, demanded the car keys and threatened to use the knife.
The son handed over the key before the tourists fled into a stairwell and locked the door behind them.
The accomplice was later arrested in the driver’s seat of the stolen car, with the bread knife in the footwell.
Justice Stephen Estcourt described the offending as “extremely serious”.
“… If they were committed as an adult, they would undoubtedly attract a sentence of imprisonment measured in years and not months,” he said.
The court heard the teenager had been engaging consistently with youth justice supervision and lived with anxiety, ADHD and sleep issues.
Justice Estcourt sentenced him to six months detention, wholly suspended for two years on the condition of good behaviour and complete 105 hours of community service.
No conviction was recorded due to his “age and his very good prospects of changing his approach to life”.
