Another three teenagers were arrested last week as part of a police operation targeting alleged youth crime in northern NSW.
Police on Friday said they’d arrested 26 people since 1 January as part of Operation Soteria, representing 133 offences, mostly related to property offences.
Last week’s arrests were reportedly part of an investigation into several break and enter offences across the Coffs/Clarence, Richmond and Tweed/Byron Police Districts, where police said vehicles were stolen.
Officers said their inquiries suggested the incidents were linked.
Early morning police chase at Sapphire Beach
Police said they tried to stop an allegedly stolen vehicle at Sapphire Beach, near Coffs Harbour, around 2.15am Thursday 22 January but that the driver drove towards an officer approaching on foot, who was then ‘forced to take evasive action’.
Police pursued the vehicle along the Pacific Highway before calling off the chase owing to the other driver’s ‘manner of driving’, a police report stated.
Officers later found the vehicle abandoned at Yamba and the next day arrested three teenagers in relation to the incident, at a Coraki home around 1pm.
Two on bail, alleged driver denied
The thirteen and eighteen year-olds, both male, were taken to Lismore Police Station and each charged with fourteen offences, as follow:
- aggravated break and enter dwelling etc in company steal (four counts);
- take and drive conveyance without consent of owner (four counts);
- larceny (two counts);
- aggravated break and enter and commit serious indictable offence;
- enter building/land with intent commit indictable offence;
- destroy or damage property, and;
- be carried in conveyance taken without consent of owner.
The thirteen-year-old later received granted strict conditional bail and was to appear before the children’s court on Wednesday 22 April.
The eighteen-year-old also received strict conditional bail and was to appear before Lismore Local Court on Wednesday 15 April.
The seventeen-year-old was charged with similar offences, sixteen in total, including driving recklessly and failing to stop during a police pursuit.
He was also charged for never being licensed to drive on the road, and for using an offensive weapon to prevent police investigation.
He was refused bail and was to appear before the children’s court on Friday 30 January.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
