An Austrian man who incited his 14-year-old son and his best friend to commit a series of armed robberies tried to pin the blame on the two teens in court after they were caught. A 34-year-old man recently shocked the Judge and Jury in Courtroom 1 of the Vienna Regional Court after putting the blame on his 14-year-old son and his 17-year-old best friend for a series of robberies, claiming they had masterminded the crimes and he was only their getaway driver. The trio’s modus operandi was pretty much the same every time. The two minors were sent into tobacco shops and gas stations wearing balaclavas and wielding knives or pistols loaded with blank bullets, while the 34-year-old man waited outside behind the wheel of the getaway car. They carried out seven robberies before finally getting caught, but instead of taking responsibility for inciting the two boys, he claimed that they had convinced him to be their accomplice.

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“The first defendant didn’t need the two children for the robberies. It’s exactly the other way around. The two persuaded him,” the 34-year-old man’s lawyer told the Court, attracting incredulous looks from both attendants and members of the Jury. Despite being confronted with cellphone records and proof that he owned the weapons used in the robberies, the man insisted that it was all the boy’s doing and he was merely convinced to be their getaway driver. Prosecutors and the boys’ defendants both claimed that he had masterminded the crime spree and incited the teens into carrying them out, but he insisted it was the other way around. “Why are you dragging your son into a situation like this? I would do anything to keep my children out of it as much as possible. It’s destroying his life. I find that incomprehensible,” the Judge told the 34-year-old man.

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However, to everyone’s surprise, before his own son could take the stand and testify before the Court, the man had a change of heart and admitted his guilt, taking full responsibility for the robberies. Although his reaction was welcomed by the Judge, he was told “if you had done it an hour and a half earlier, you would have saved us a lot of time.” The 34-year-old was sentenced to eight years in prison, while his son, who recently turned 15, got three and a half years behind bars, of which he will serve a minimum of one year, and the 17-year-old boy received a two-and-a-half years sentence, 10 months of which will be in prison.