Joshua Samuel Moore jailed over Narrandera carjacking, sexual assault attack on health worker

Joshua Samuel Moore was jailed over the terrifying ordeal, which unfolded on November 2, 2021, in the Wagga District Court last week after pleading guilty in April.

The once-lauded apprentice chef, who was featured in metropolitan newspapers and invited to travel to Ireland to showcase Indigenous ingredients, retired from the profession three months before the apprenticeship was completed.

On the afternoon of his 26th birthday, Moore attended a clinic in Narrandera and demanded methamphetamine from a staff member, who sought help from a colleague as he raised his voice and became aggressive. When they returned to the reception area, Moore was holding a brick in each hand and swung at one of staffers.

Outside, a pathology worker was settling into their vehicle when Moore flew into the passenger's seat, jerked her seatbelt and repeatedly ordered her to "f-----g drive", reaching speeds of 80km/h in a residential area.

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As Moore abused and directed his victim to drive out of town along Old Wagga Road, he oscillated between calm periods and outbursts in which he grabbed the steering wheel and said "I don't care if I die today" and "this is fun, isn't it?" before threatening the victim.

"I will bash your skull in. I'll kill your family," Moore said, according to agreed facts.

At the behest of the carjacker, the victim drove to a rest area near the Murrumbidgee River, parked the vehicle near a boat ramp and turned off the car.

Moore then forced his victim to perform oral sex before complaining about the heat and ordering her to open the car door. As she did, he said "don't try anything".

At this point the victim looked in the rear vision mirror and noticed a white ute, which had not been there before, parked at nearby picnic tables.

Moore again forced the woman to engage in a sex act then got out of the car and walked around to her door - his pants down and penis exposed - to demand "more", before appearing to panic and ordering her into the passenger seat.

As she moved over the console, the woman grabbed her phone from the passenger seat and fled out the open passenger door towards the ute while screaming for help.

The driver told her to get in, and they watched Moore drive towards them before they reversed away and drove off.

The victim was driven back to Narrandera, where she spoke with police and was taken to the district hospital for treatment.

Moore was arrested at gunpoint that day after a tracking device on the car led police to him and the vehicle near a campsite east of Narrandera.

He has remained in custody since his arrest and in April pleaded guilty to charges of carjacking, aggravated sexual assault and assaulting police.

In Wagga District Court last week Judge Gordon Lerve ordered Moore to stay behind bars until at least November 1, 2025, when the non-parole period of six years and four months expires.

In an affidavit, Moore outlined significant childhood deprivation and how he returned to Bourke and Leeton after becoming burnt out during his apprenticeship. He began to struggle with his mental health after three months working in Queensland and anxiety built around the pandemic, at which point "things began to deteriorate" and he began smoking ice.

Judge Lerve accepted reports from a psychologist and a forensic psychiatrist, which outlined Moore had been smoking cannabis daily, drinking several times a week and acknowledged he had smoked crystal methamphetamine daily for a week prior to the attack. The judge also took into account feelings of remorse, Moore's abstinence since the carjacking and his limited criminal history.

"While I am prepared to find that the offender suffers from mental health conditions I am not prepared to find on all of the circumstances and on the material before me that there is a causal connection between those mental health conditions and the offending," Judge Lerve said in sentencing Moore.

"Rather it was the offender's self-induced intoxication that was the principal contributory factor to the offending."

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