Troy Justin Waikin Mathew Brown: Albany man jailed for terrorising family, strangers with ‘AR-15’ gel blaster

An Albany man has been jailed for terrorising relatives and strangers while he was high on methamphetamine and armed with a gel blaster “identical” to an AR-15 rifle. Troy Justin Waikin Mathew Brown, 30, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison in Albany District Court this month after pleading guilty to deprivation of liberty, armed robbery and pretending to be armed in a way that may cause fear. The court was told that about 9pm on September 17 last year, an 18-year-old woman was at Apex Park in Lockyer with her partner and three children she was babysitting aged 14, 10 and nine. The children were playing basketball when Brown approached them yelling and swearing, causing them to run to the victim’s parked car in fear. Brown — an older cousin of the victim — stood in front of the car with a gel blaster. The court was told the gel blaster was identical in appearance to an AR-15. He tapped the barrel of the blaster on the window then pointed it at the children in the back seat and ordered the victim to take him to Spencer Park. After getting into the car, he held the five occupants hostage while he was driven across Albany, stressing that his firearm was real and threatening to shoot them. “One can only imagine how terrifying an experience this was for the occupants of the car, particular the younger children, who were remarked as crying and shouting, wanting to get out of the car and get away,” State prosecutor Mimi Yeung said. “And the victim driving the car, effectively, under duress, too scared to stop, despite their cries, because she thought the offender would shoot one or all of them.” About 12 minutes after he first approached the group at Apex Park, he got out of the car with his gel blaster and knocked on the front window of a Spencer Park unit. “An elderly female occupant inside saw the offender standing at her window with the gel blaster gun, waving it around,” Ms Yeung said. “She got up from her chair and immediately locked the front door and called the police. “ In a statement, the woman said she had never met Brown. “She described him pointing (the gel blaster) at her, as if taking aim, in her own home. She was quite convinced the rifle was real and thought he was about to shoot her,” Ms Yeung said. Brown then approached another home nearby and knocked on the front door. “A female occupant opened the door and saw the offender holding the gel blaster gun,” Ms Yeung said. “The female shut the door and yelled at the other occupants to call the police.” Brown kicked the door a few times before heading to his home address in Spencer Park, where he found relatives sitting in the backyard and threatened to shoot them. “The offender then pulled the magazine out of the gel blaster, reloaded it and said, ‘I’m going to blow your head off’,” Ms Yeung said. “The offender’s cousin and uncle jumped up and ran out, away from the offender.” The terror only ended when Brown heard someone shout that the police had been called, prompting him to break the gel blaster into pieces and throw them in a garden bed. Police arrested him that night and found pieces of the gel blaster. “Mr Brown, armed as he was and behaving as he was, terrorised a lot of people in their homes that night and many thought they were about to be shot,” Ms Yeung said. Ms Yeung said the initial acts of commandeering the vehicle were a “serious example” of armed robbery and deprivation of liberty. The court was told Brown had served several terms of imprisonment, including in relation to another deprivation of liberty offence in 2013. Defence lawyer Kyah Langdon said Brown had a longstanding addiction to methamphetamine and was under the influence of meth and alcohol on the night of his crimes. Although he barely remembers the offending, Ms Langdon said her client had accepted the prosecution case and was “generally remorseful for his actions”. The defence recognised that the offending could have long-lasting psychological impacts on the victims, she said. She said Brown’s meth addiction had contributed to him serving several terms of imprisonment and it was a “serious illness” that he wants to address. “(He) tells me it’s only when he serves terms of imprisonment that he abstains from that drug,” Ms Langdon said. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Stephen Lemonis said that deprivation of liberty offence would have been ”traumatising” for the children. “In assessing your risk of reoffending, I assess it as high,” Judge Lemonis said. “Unless you’re unable to stop your methamphetamine use, then it’s very likely that you will engage in similar type offending.” He sentenced Brown to four years and eight months in prison, backdated to September 19, 2021, when he was taken into custody.