PROSECUTORS have dropped a kidnapping charge against two men who were accused of assaulting and detaining a man before stealing his Holden Commodore, the vehicle later used as the getaway car for a group of men who shot up a house at Tenambit.
Mitchell Mervin and Logan Roworth had pleaded not guilty to the kidnapping charge and were expected to face a trial in Newcastle District Court next month.
However, after negotiations between the DPP and defence barristers Rob Hussey and Russell Boyd, the pair were re-arraigned on Thursday and pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery in company, prosecutors ordering no further proceedings on the kidnapping charge.
The men remain behind bars and will be sentenced on October 1, when Mervin will also be sentenced for his role in a shooting at Tenambit in the days after they stole the car.
According to court documents, Mervin and Roworth had been accused of directing the victim to a quiet country road at Buchanan on October 14, 2022, before they assaulted him and stole his blue Holden Commodore.
Before the charge was dropped, prosecutors had alleged the pair decided to detain the victim overnight at a Thornton motel so they could transfer the car into the name of an associate when Service NSW opened in the morning.
But the victim managed to escape, spending the night hiding in a nearby car yard before he raised the alarm on October 16.
In the meantime, Mervin had taken the car and was using it to pick up four men from Queens Wharf Road at Morpeth in the early hours of the same morning.
The group had met there to discuss what they were going to do next; a targeted shooting of a house in Goldingham Street at Tenambit.
It was about 6.40am when Mervin parked the stolen car in Valentia Parade, a block behind the house, and four men got out.
One man loaded and fired a pistol at the house, the bullet striking the window and deflecting into a tree in the front yard.
Another man fired two shots into a hire car parked in the driveway and fled.
While a third man attempted to discharge a shortened pump action shotgun into the hired MG, but the gun wouldn't fire.
He fled with the others back to Mervin in the stolen Holden Commodore and Mervin drove the group from the scene.
There were people inside the house at the time of the shooting, but no one was injured.
After the shooting, someone drove the MG from the house at Tenambit around to Butchers Lane at Morpeth and police later found the car riddled with bullet holes.
The house that was shot at was linked to Maddison Hickson, a young woman who, at the time of the shooting, was about to face a murder trial over the stabbing death of her father, Michael Carroll.
Ms Hickson was later acquitted of murder on the basis of self-defence and the shooting had nothing to do with her father's death or her upcoming trial.
And while it took police a few months to arrest all those responsible, the people at the house knew who it was within five minutes, Ms Hickson sending a Snapchat message to one of the men at 6.45am saying "Are you f---ing for real c---?? You shot my f---ing mum's house up while my niece and nephew are there?!"
Mervin never got out of the car or fired any shots but he pleaded guilty to using an offensive weapon in company and firing a firearm in a public place on the basis that he was party to a joint criminal enterprise with the other men to shot up the house in Tenambit and intimidate those inside.
