A 13-year-old girl, who allegedly “weaponised” stolen cars to target certain community members, has been refused bail.<\/p>\n
Three minutes after she allegedly mowed down a cyclist in a stolen car, the young teenager googled the punishment for running someone over, the court heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 13-year-old, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared in a children’s court on Monday seeking bail.<\/p>\n
She is facing 109 charges, including reckless conduct endangering serious injury, theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary.<\/p>\n
In one incident on March 30, the girl was allegedly behind the wheel of a stolen car in Brighton in Melbourne’s south-east and attempted to hit a cyclist with the passenger door of the car.<\/p>\n
An argument ensued between the cyclist and the car occupants before it was allegedly driven into the 45-year-old man, knocking him to the ground.<\/p>\n
Police were able to go through the girl’s phone, where they found some “troubling” content, including videos.<\/p>\n
“Shortly after that incident \u2014 within three minutes \u2014 she googled how long the sentence is for running someone over,” Detective Senior Constable Jarryd Grey told the court on Monday.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite troubling \u2026 we realised it’s premeditated.”<\/p>\n
The victim, who continues to suffer neck pain, dizziness, speech difficulties and waking distressed at night, said the incident has impacted his and his family’s lives.<\/p>\n
Girl poses ‘overwhelming’ risk to community, judge says<\/p>\n
The girl thrived on notoriety and was invested in how many news articles and likes on social media coverage of her alleged offending generated, the detective said.<\/p>\n
“She thinks it gives her status in her group which is really concerning,” he said.<\/p>\n
The court heard about other alleged incidents targeting Jewish people, including antisemitic remarks shouted at pedestrians in Hampton, Ripponlea and Caulfield, and swerving towards a Jewish family in Ripponlea in March \u2014 causing them run for cover.<\/p>\n
“There was a web search on ‘where do Jews live’,” Detective Grey told the court.<\/p>\n
“It shows us it is targeted. She is going out of her way to target a certain community.”<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said the teen’s offending had escalated to a point where she was allegedly offending an average of 1.45 times a day in 74 days.<\/p>\n
“It’s reached its current peak in which a 13-year-old child is not only repeatedly been behind the wheel of a stolen car, but is weaponising them at the risk of road users,” he said.<\/p>\n
“She has expressed that nothing will stop her offending.”<\/p>\n
The girl’s defence lawyer, in arguing for her bail, said Youth Justice has agreed to supervise her and alert authorities if she was released on bail and breached conditions.<\/p>\n
He said his client had expressed a willingness to return to school and could do so once school holidays were over.<\/p>\n
The magistrate said there was only one conclusion he could reach when denying the teen bail.<\/p>\n
“The risk to the community is overwhelming,” he said.<\/p>\n
The girl will face the court again in 21 days.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 13-year-old girl, who allegedly “weaponised” stolen cars to target certain community members, has been refused bail. Three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9903,58039,1108,48,43,44,41,39,42,40,9963],"class_list":{"0":"post-603776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-car-theft","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories","18":"tag-youth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}