One Year In Jail For Front-end Loader Rampage

The Age

Thursday January 6, 1994

DUNCAN GRAHAM

A man who went on a rampage through a Western Australian town in a stolen 22-tonne, front-end loader last year was sentenced yesterday to one year's jail for each of three houses he attacked.

The Court of Petty Sessions in Moora, north of Perth, ruled that the sentences, and a further three-month sentence for theft, are to be served concurrently by Craig Claessen, 24.

At 1.30am on 31 October, Claessen stole a 22-tonne, front-end loader, filled it with fuel, turned on all the lights and went on his mission of revenge.

According to his lawyer, Mr Leslie Buchbinder, Claessen had been angered two days earlier by the theft of $6000 from his truck. The previous day he saw some Aboriginal children spending heavily in a local shop and ``rightly or wrongly he drew the conclusion that they were involved in the theft or knew who it was," Mr Buchbinder said.

He said it was ``the final straw" for Claessen.

After stealing the loader, he roared through the back streets of Moora seeking the homes of three Aboriginal families. At the first, according to the prosecutor, acting Sergeant Graeme Comerford, Claessen crashed through a fence and put the six-metre-wide loader bucket up against the house wall.

Sergeant Comerford said the angry man then shouted: ``I want my money.

I know who it is. You've got five minutes." The four people in the Homeswest (state housing) house fled, so Claessen smashed the machine into the house, causing $5493 damage.

In the next 100 minutes he dropped his bucket on three cars, damaging two beyond repair and tore through backyard fences, demolishing clothes lines and play equipment. Claessen also attacked two more houses and rammed a youth club. All the vehicles and property were owned or used by Aboriginal people. (At the time, Homeswest estimated the total damage at $65,000.) The court was told that during the rampage Claessen was chased by two police cars. But they were blinded by the loader's spotlights and had to retreat as the big machine rumbled through stop signs and down the wrong side of the road.

Eventually Claessen stopped and, according to Sergeant Comerford, told police: ``Why should these bastards have stuff when they've stolen ours?" Yesterday the magistrate, Mr David Brown, said Claessen, who pleaded guilty to all the offences and had apologised to some of the people whose houses he smashed, could be out of prison and on parole within four to six months.

© 1994 The Age

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