Mark Taylor/Stuff
Police rushed to the Westpac bank at the Chartwell shopping centre in Hamilton after Mohammed Mausheem used a replica firearm to rob a teller of almost $2000.
Lockdown wasn’t kind to Mohammed Mausheem. He lost his job, became addicted to methamphetamine and, in a desperate bid to pay off his drug debts, he robbed two Hamilton banks and a dairy in a single day. Mausheem, 27, wept silently in the dock on Tuesday as he was jailed for four years and two months at his sentencing in the Hamilton District Court. The events that led up to a day of “very stupid choices” on September 30 – namely the armed robberies of the Westpac bank at the Chartwell shopping centre, the Kiwibank bank at Rototuna, and a dairy at Taupiri – were laid bare in court by Mausheem’s counsel Gerard Walsh.