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Two members of a group previously described as “vigilantes” have pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and burglary charges over an incident in which police say a plate was smashed on a man’s head. Dylan Crick and Marco Marzotto entered the pleas in the ACT Supreme Court on Thursday morning, more than seven months after they broke into a home in Spence. Lawyers for the men told Justice Michael Elkaim the precise facts of the pair’s offending had not yet been agreed upon with prosecutors. In the days after the incident, police alleged in documents tendered to the ACT Magistrates Court that three men and two women had busted into the Spence house about 1.50am on July 10, 2020. It was alleged that the group broke a window and demanded that a man who lived in the home hand over his mobile phone. Police said one of the intruders then picked up a decorative glass plate and smashed it on the back of the victim’s head, which began to bleed. The victim told investigators that he was also punched and pinned to a bed before someone eventually located his phone within the house, and the group left with it. When the case first came to court, a prosecutor described the incident as a form of “vigilante justice”. READ MORE: She claimed the offending group had wanted the victim’s phone because they thought it contained evidence of a serious crime the man had supposedly committed against one of them. The first of those charged over the incident to plead guilty was childcare worker Morgan Facer, who was convicted last year of aggravated burglary and placed on a two-year good behaviour order. Facer was not one of the people who entered the Spence home, but she admitted she stood outside and did nothing to stop the offenders before acting as their “getaway driver”. After Crick and Marzotto entered their guilty pleas on Thursday, Justice Elkaim ordered that their cases go before a registrar next week for sentencing dates to be set. Crick is on bail, while Marzotto is in custody. A number of others charged over the same incident remain before the courts. Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:

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