A 21-year-old man who held up a shop at gunpoint after a loan shark threatened to kill him and his family was jailed for eight years yesterday.Curtis Mallory, of Warwick, carried out the armed robbery at Fresh ‘N’ New, on Devil’s Hole Hill, Smith’s, on January 2 out of “desperation”, according to his lawyer Victoria Pearman.She told Supreme Court her client, who had no previous convictions, got caught up on the fringes of gang life and owed money to an unsavoury character who visited his home and made death threats.“In the old days when they threatened to kill you, it was something you could take lightly,” Ms Pearman said. “That’s certainly not the case today.”Prosecutor Cindy Clarke told the court Mallory entered the store on January 2 wearing a black helmet with a full-face visor and ordered storekeeper Jason DeMello to open the till.Mr DeMello told in his witness statement how Mallory pulled a handgun wrapped in a plastic bag from the waistband of his pants and pointed it at him.The victim handed over $500 before his assailant, wearing a distinctive black leather jacket adorned on the back with red flames, fled.Senior Crown counsel Ms Clarke said police recovered the gun and found it had several major parts missing. The jacket was found behind a telephone pole.She told Chief Justice Richard Ground: “This defendant is solely to blame for this offence. It’s his own lifestyle choices that led him to commit this offence. We believe it was calculated and planned, as opposed to opportunistic or impulsive.”She said the maximum jail term Mallory could get was 20 years but six to eight would be more suitable since he had a clean record and was wielding a gun which couldn’t have been fired.Ms Clarke said violent offences were on the increase and the public needed to understand using a gun would land them a hefty jail term.Mallory pleaded guilty to robbery and brandishing a firearm at a court hearing last month. He denied two other charges relating to an alleged robbery in Devonshire on January 4 and the Crown asked for them to lie on the file.Ms Pearman said her client found himself threatened with “serious injury or worse” if he didn’t pay back a debt he owed.“It started off as a $1,000 [debt], grew to $2,000 and by the time this happened, it was up to $4,000. The most recent threat with a gun actually came a few days before this enterprise.”She described the robbery as being prompted by a “state of desperation on his part” and said he stole the gun from another unsavoury character.“This was a gun in pieces, or components of a gun. There was one of the main components missing. No magazine, no ammunition, no barrel.“Certainly, while it was capable of firing, perhaps it certainly wasn’t capable of hurting.”The lawyer said Mallory didn’t point the gun at Mr DeMello’s face but showed him the outline of the weapon.“Mr Mallory was walking around determined to get money howsoever he could. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get it. It appears that going to this particular store was something of an afterthought.“It wasn’t the case where he staked this place out or anything as sophisticated as that.”She told the court: “Even though Mr Mallory himself has never been a part of a gang, a lot of this has respect to people who are gang-affiliated.“He told police: ‘I made a stupid decision and got involved with the wrong people. Can I just put on record that this is the stupidest thing I have ever done. I have never been in trouble before.’”Mallory told Mr Justice Ground: “I’m sorry for what I have done. I am sorry for embarrassing my family. I am sorry for embarrassing myself. I’m sorry for wasting everybody’s time.”The Chief Justice said there was a mandatory minimum ten-year prison term for such a firearm offence but the court could go below that and there were mitigating factors in the case.He accepted Mallory’s version of what led him to commit the crime and noted the defendant’s stepfather confirmed the family was threatened.Mr Justice Ground said the robbery was opportunistic and was committed by Mallory to “try to get himself out of the trouble he was in”.“I accept that this robbery itself was not a gang activity. Had I thought it was I would have taken a very different view from the one I’m going to take.”He said the gun was incomplete and Mallory didn’t take it out of the bag. “It wasn’t capable, at that moment, of being fired,” he said.“Putting all that together, I think that this is one of those cases where proportionality requires the court to go below the ten-year minimum and the Crown accepts that.”He sentenced Mallory to two years for the robbery and six years for brandishing the gun, with the jail terms to run consecutively.