LIKE the opening scene of a bad teenage horror movie, two 17-year-old Wagga girls were sitting in a car on Beauty Point Avenue in failing light when a mysterious figure drove up beside them.
What the deranged man did to the girls and three boys they knew over the next three hours was terrifying.
According to police facts tendered to Wagga Local Court, the 34-year-old Kooringal man knocked on a window of the girls’ car about 8pm on March 17.
He tried to speak to them and then attempted to open a locked door. Unable to get into the car, the man walked to the front of the vehicle and stood with crossed arms before speaking to the girls again through a closed window.
The frightened girls drove away, only for their stalker to follow them in his car and tailgate them along Kooringal Road before overtaking and stopping suddenly, forcing the inexperienced young driver to brake harshly and veer onto the wrong side of the road.
The man did the same thing on Lake Albert Road as the girls drove to Apex Park where they knew three boys, also aged 17, were waiting for them.
In the carpark, the man got into an argument with the boys and got a jack out of his boot, which he swung over his head while five metres from one of them. According to police, the man insisted he have “time with the girls”.
The girls were able to drive away, but the stalker followed. The hunted girls drove into a side street to hide but were spotted by the man. He was doing a U-turn towards the girls when the boys turned up in their car and blocked his path.
The man pulled out the jack again, forcing the male driver to reverse. The five teenagers then drove to Wagga police station.
But that was not the end of the drama.
Asked to return to the police station later in the night to make a statement, the boys came across the man on Captain Cook Drive.
The jack came out again and was swung around, and the man this time also stopped the teenager from shutting his car door for a short time.
Police found the man in Fay Avenue and took him to hospital where he underwent mental health treatment for nearly two months.
The man was charged with five counts of stalk/intimidate and one count each of knowingly drive a vehicle in a menacing manner and common assault.
The charges were dismissed in court on the condition he adhere to a mental health treatment order.
