The court was told Darryl John Campton was recruited by an organised crime gang in November 2025 to target a store that refused to sell its illegal vapes and cigarettes.
CCTV showed Campton and two other men using a stolen car and a street sign to "battery ram" the metal shutters on the front of the Great Eastern Highway shop. They then peeled the shutters apart to get inside, poured fuel from a jerry can and set the shop on fire before fleeing the scene. The damage was estimated at almost $20,000.
Campton was paid $5,000 for being the getaway driver. One of his co-offenders took part in return for having his drug debt wiped.
Judge Belinda Lonsdale said Campton was "susceptible to pressure from peers" as a result of "a dysfunctional childhood" that included abuse, leading to drug use and anti-social behaviour. The court was told his history of offending and drug use stretched back into childhood, including a suggestion he suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. "The impetus for this offending is to feed his long-standing and insatiable drug habit," the court was told.
The sentence also covered a nighttime burglary in which Campton woke the occupant of an Iluka property by standing in his bedroom doorway with a hatchet in his hand and a bandana covering his face, before stealing the keys to a BMW. He later broke into the home of a Craigie acquaintance, and his car was used about an hour after that break-in in the Midland ram raid.
Judge Lonsdale sentenced Campton to a total of 4½ years, including two years for the attack on the Midland store, the same sentence given to one of his co-offenders.