Repeat offender Satwinder Singh was asked to show his receipt when leaving Kmart with a trolley load of items. Instead, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a knife.

“Do you want me to use this on you?” He asked the staff member who had confronted him leaving the Napier store with items he hadn’t paid for.

Exactly what was in the trolley was not disclosed when Singh, 30, appeared for sentence in the Napier District Court on Tuesday on a charge of aggravated robbery.

However, Judge Richard Earwaker said the value of the items taken in the robbery last August 26 was $526. The goods were recovered.

Police were called and managed to find Singh in a residential area a short time later. They chased him through a yard and down driveways, and he tried to get into a woman’s house.

She managed to force him back out again. He was also charged with being unlawfully in a building.

Defence counsel Leo Lafferty had argued that what happened at the Kmart store was akin to a “street robbbery”, but Judge Earwaker said it was more serious than that.

“You have gone into a retail property armed, while intending to steal items,” he told Singh.

The encounter with the store worker, during which Singh brandished the 30cm knife, was “relatively brief” but it was still a serious offence requiring a deterrent sentence.

“This type of offending is certainly on the rise and if people come in brandishing weapons ... someone is going to get hurt,” the judge said.

He sentenced Singh, whom he said was “well known to the courts”, to two years and three months in prison.

Judge Earwaker said victim impact reports showed no physical injuries but there was a “great deal” of emotional harm, as well as the impact on the victims’ sense of security and ability to feel safe at work or home.

He said Singh was an alcoholic from an unstable background and an abusive home life growing up. He had been abandoned by his father and was in a boys’ home for some time, where he suffered abuse.

He had seven previous convictions for robbery and 12 for theft, along with convictions for assault, assault with intent and assault with a weapon.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.