The first burglary by Louis Shuang, who is now aged 23, took place inside Marketplace Gungahlin in June 2022. Photo: Region.
A serial burglar has been sentenced after he and others committed several break-ins and thefts from stores inside north Canberra shopping centres, where more than $30,000 worth of electronics were stolen.
Early in the morning of 15 June 2022, Louis Shuang and an unidentified man forced their way through the doors of Gungahlin Marketplace before Shuang used an angle grinder to break into CeX Gungahlin.
The pair filled pillowcases with 30 mobile phones and six iPads, worth over $17,000, before fleeing.
Shuang, aged 20 at the time, went to police himself the following month, telling them he wanted to hand himself in because someone was going to report him for trying to sell a phone he had stolen from the store.
He said he had also stolen a number of other phones, although wouldn’t say how many and had sold most of them for about $400 each.
He was allowed to leave and was not arrested over this incident until after committing more crimes.
In the early hours of 1 March 2023, Shuang and then-20-year-old Alan Hiribee Malibe forced open glass doors at Westfield Belconnen, then crouched behind various pieces of furniture to avoid cleaners.
When a cleaner approached their hiding spot, they fled.
But the pair returned to the mall on 21 June 2023 with an unidentified third man, then forced their way through the doors again.
Shuang started using an angle grinder to try and break into the mall’s CeX store before he and the third man also tried using an axe to break through the store’s door.
Eventually, the three of them kicked a hole in the glass door until it was large enough to get inside.
Malibe and Shuang filled two bags with about 46 mobile phones, worth over $15,000, before they all tried to flee.
Police soon spotted Shuang and caught him after a short chase, while Malibe was found hiding behind a hedge. The officers were able to recover the phones.
Shuang pleaded guilty to three counts of burglary, two counts of theft by joint commission and two counts of damaging property by joint commission.
In the sentencing remarks by the ACT Supreme Court’s Acting Justice Rebecca Christensen SC, released this week, she said Shuang spent a long period in custody on remand so the main issue for him on sentencing was when he should be released.
Shuang was granted bail twice, but it had been refused again by the time he was sentenced in late June 2025. He had spent a total of 470 days in custody.
Acting Justice Christensen said when he handed himself in over the first burglary, police seemingly took no action despite his admissions.
“He was a young man who informed police of his unlawful conduct,” she said.
“I accept that in those circumstances, where he was not made efficiently accountable, there is an impact on the extent to which he understood how serious such conduct was.”
He was a refugee from South Sudan who came to Canberra when he was a baby.
“His escalation into such serious offending is somewhat inexplicable in the circumstances, but is explained to an extent by his misuse of substances,” Acting Justice Christensen said.
He expressed his guilt and shame for his offending in a letter for the court, saying he was “young and stupid”, but was now “dedicated to changing [his] life for the better and closing this chapter of coming in and out of jail for good”.
Shuang was convicted and sentenced to three years and four months’ jail to be suspended after he spent about one year and four months behind bars.
As the sentence was backdated to take into account time served, this meant the now-23-year-old was able to be released from custody on 30 June 2025 if he signed a good behaviour order that would last until July 2027.
Malibe was sentenced over his role in the second two burglaries last year.
Perhaps under this government people might start living on the tram. View