For the second time this year, Bryan Clifford Loughnane asked to be jailed, saying he wouldn’t meet the requirements of any other order.

The 23-year-old appeared in Ballarat Magistrates Court yesterday where he pleaded guilty to 12 charges including two counts of refusing a breath test, reckless conduct endangering life and multiple theft offences.

Police prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Pepe Brown said that in the early hours of October 10 last year, Loughnane and a group of associates went to a Sebastopol man’s house over an earlier altercation. He said the victim went to the front gate where Loughnane raised his hands and “made contact” with him. Feeling a sharp object in Loughnane’s hand, which he believed to be a knife, the victim ran inside while the group smashed windows outside.

On an occasion last August, again late at night, Loughnane spent an hour doing burn-outs, donuts and 360s out the front of a neighbour’s house. When the victim appeared with his family, Loughnane drove at them, hitting a gutter and ending about a metre from the victim. Police arrived soon after to find Loughnane driving around in circles. He refused to be breath tested.

But magistrate John O’Callaghan said it was “an act of stupidity” to refuse the test.

In unusual circumstances, defence lawyer David Tamanika said he had been instructed to ask for prison sentence. 

Loughnane was sentenced to three months in jail, was fined $2900 and disqualified from driving for five years.