Wagga District Court has been shown dramatic CCTV footage of a man allegedly being forced at knifepoint to assist in a supermarket break-in.
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Prosecutors showed about 22 minutes of CCTV and police camera footage in court on Tuesday to illustrate its case against Michael William Carr, aged 21 and formerly of Mount Austin.
Mr Carr is facing a judge-only trial on 11 charges including armed robbery, aggravated break and enter and steal, and motor vehicle theft.
Prosecutors have also accused Mr Carr of kidnapping a man at Forest Hill with the intent to commit a serious indictable offence.
In the silent footage shown to the court, a man wearing a dark-coloured tracksuit with the hood pulled up over a baseball cap, leads another man, dressed in a high-visibility jacket into a Forest Hill Foodworks about 3am on May 16, 2020.
Both men approached the cash registers in the store, at which point police zoomed the footage onto the hoodie-wearing man, who was holding a large knife while wearing green gloves.
The court was later shown a video of police retrieving a pair of green 'Tiger 3' safety gloves from a wheelie bin on Northcott Parade in Mount Austin on May 19, 2020.
The man in work clothes is then forced at knifepoint to assist in opening the cash registers and breaking open a container just outside the video's frame with a fire extinguisher and a hammer.
The man in the tracksuit at one point briefly looks up at the camera and some of his facial features could be seen as police freeze-framed the video and zoomed in on his face. Mr Carr attended court in person on Tuesday and watched the 22 minutes of footage but did not visibly react.
Crown Prosecutor Trevor Bailey said he had produced the video to the court, along with numerous written statements from victims and police, to outline the case against Mr Carr.
District Court Judge Gordon Lerve said he would view the materials only to understand the charges and would not use them to determine any facts at this point in the trial.
The court was also shown CCTV from The Rock Foodworks in which a man in a dark tracksuit pushed in a glass wall panel to gain access to the store just before 5am on May 17, 2020.
The man then pulled out several drawers from behind the cash register area and loaded their contents into a dual-cab utility vehicle with a camper shell.
Prosecutors had planned to call the man depicted in the video being held at knifepoint in the Forest Hill store as a witness to identify Mr Carr as the alleged assailant.
However, Mr Bailey this week told the court that the witness was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mr Bailey told Judge Lerve that he expected it was likely the psychiatrist would find the witness unfit to testify in the short or medium term.
"As I have said, [the witness] is the lynchpin of our case," Mr Bailey said.
Judge Lerve ordered the psychiatrist produce a report on the witness within the next four weeks.
Mr Bailey said he would likely apply to have a statement from the witness presented to the court without cross-examination.
Mr Bailey said he would then use a precedent from a murder conviction appeal by Craig Billings in 2012 that "a series of offences of the same or a similar character" could be linked to a defendant if one offence was proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Judge Lerve adjourned Mr Carr's trial to July 11.
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