Once upon a time there were three flatmates who lived in a house in Wollongong.
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One night in January, the girls decided to go out for the night.
While they were away, a convicted criminal called Jeremy Preo came upon their Corrimal Street home.
He went through the front gate, walked onto the front verandah and lay down on an outdoor couch, where he fell fast asleep.
One of the women returned part-way through the night. Upon seeing Preo in a state of slumber, she though he must have been a friend of one of her flatmates and so let him be.
She spent 10 minutes inside the house before heading off again, locking the front door on the way out.
Sometime later, Jeremy Preo awoke from his snooze and surveyed his surroundings, before heading around to the back of the house.
There he discovered the backdoor shut but unlocked, and let himself inside.
Preo, who’d apparently awoken with the munchies, headed straight for the kitchen, where he came across a large pavlova perched on the kitchen stove.
Preo hooked in, devouring a generous helping of the tasty treat that lay before him.
Parched from his sugary indulgence, Preo opened the fridge door to find a bottle of orange juice. He drank his fill then left the container on the bench before turning his attention to the freezer.
‘A Paddle Pop? That’ll hit the spot!’, Preo must have thought to himself, pulling an ice cream from the freezer and heading into one of the bedrooms.
He sat on the bed, ate his dessert then curled up under a sheet and quickly fell asleep.
Sometime later he woke up and departed the house, leaving behind the remains of his dinner as well as a liberally sprinkling of his DNA.
It’s not known when the women came home that night, but one spied an unfamiliar cap on the kitchen table when she emerged the next morning and called police.
Fast forward four months and Preo, who in the interim had found a more permanent home at Silverwater jail on unrelated matters, was interviewed by police.
He refused to say anything about that night other than to confirm the cap was his, and that he “didn’t eat pavlova”.
Preo eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of breaking and entering. In court on Friday, he was sentenced to 20 months behind bars, with a non-parole period of 10 months.
With time served, he will be released on parole in February next year.
The End.