A woman who stole a knife from a Kings Meadows supermarket the day before she used it to hold up staff at the store has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Megan Lambert, 31, recently appeared in the Supreme Court on charges of theft and attempted aggravated armed robbery.
The court heard Lambert stole a Wiltshire knife, a bottle of Coke, a packet of sandwiches and another bottle of coke from the Coles supermarket on January 6, 2024.
She returned to the store the next morning at 8:09am and stole another bottle of Coke, before coming back with the knife around two hours later.
Justice Robert Pearce said Lambert approached the front counter and, as a female employee walked towards her, pulled out the knife and waved it at the staff member from across the counter.
Swearing and demanding cigarettes, Lambert threw the knife when she was asked to leave, causing a 5cm cut on the employee’s arm, before verbally abused her and leaving the store.
Police found Lambert around 150 metres away and she told them that she was “desperate for a cigarette” and confessed to having “held her up with a knife”.
The court heard that Lambert has had a “very difficult life dominated by drug abuse and mental health problems”, having dropped out of school in year 8 and has experienced long periods of homelessness since then.
Justice Pearce said she has never been employed or in a stable relationship and her two children, now aged 8 and 9, were removed from her care several years ago.
Her criminal record includes numerous offences starting when she was 15, mostly for stealing and dishonesty and other convictions for common assault, assaulting police and assaulting a public officer.
“Your crime was committed against a person who was working in the type of business which is an easy target,” Pearce said.
“The staff and customers of such businesses are entitled to the protection of the law.”
Pearce said that while the supermarket employee was not seriously injured, he did not regard the incident “as a very serious example of an armed robbery”.
“You produced the knife when the supermarket employee was still a considerable distance away from you,” he said.
“[The employee] was not to know what you might do but you remained separated by the counter and by distance and there was no realistic chance that you could have struck her with the knife, unless you threw it at her, which you then did.”
He sentenced Lambert to two years in prison, with a non-parole period of one year, for the attempted armed robbery charge and ordered her to pay $37.80 in compensation to Coles.
