Thursday, July 30, 2009

Tony Smith - Chapter 2

That was the last time I saw Tony too.

A SHOT fired through a one-way mirrored door during a hotel robbery narrowly missed employees who
were hiding in the office, the Holden Hill Magistrates Court heard yesterday.
Anthony John Smith, 19, of Devon Park, has been charged with the armed robbery of the Buckingham
Arms Hotel, Gilberton, at about 1.30am on Sunday.
Senior Constable Andrew McCracken, prosecuting, said two men armed with a hammer and a .22 calibre rifle had smashed through glass doors to enter the hotel.
The robbers forced staff to lie on the floor, stole $22,300 from the office safe and escaped through a
smashed window.
During a bail application, the court heard Smith, and a 17-year-old youth who has also been charged,
were located hiding in the ceiling of a house on nearby Walkerville Terrace. But Smith's lawyer, Mr Nick Vadasz, said there was an "innocent explanation" for this behavior. Smith had been on his way to his parents' house when he saw the police and panicked, hiding in the ceiling because he feared being implicated in whatever crime they were investigating.
Mr Vadasz said there was no evidence linking his client with the crime and he noted that neither the
money nor the weapons had been recovered despite an intensive search.
But Senior Constable McCracken said the robbery was "a disaster waiting to happen", and police were
trying to link the suspects with the robbery through forensic tests.
Smith and his co-accused have been charged with armed robbery, illegal use, four counts of
endangering life, and being unlawfully on premises.
Magistrate Mr Kevin Edgecomb ordered a home detention report and remanded Smith in custody until
later this week.


Story by Michael Owen
9 February 1999
The Advertiser

3 comments:

  1. Reminds me of a school friend who has recently been charged for murdering, or conspiring to kill his mother.

    I was friends with him until he left primary school - then I always wondered what happened to him. Until his mother's disappearance was plastered all over the papers and television. Then to have the truth come out. Wow, strange feeling.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I suspected that - either he's in prison or a CEO....

    ....and probably the father of eleven children...?

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32