A man suing former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has admitted to a brazen carjacking and has been refused bail to a rehab facility.
Ryan Meuleman, 28, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to stealing a vehicle with a child under 10 inside, giving a false address and committing an indictable offence while on bail.
Meuleman, dressed in a hoodie and underwear, had jumped into the driver's seat of a parked car outside a laundromat in Melbourne's southeast on May 3.
He turned on the engine and started moving the car but the woman, who was inside with her two three-year-old children, started screaming.
They wrestled over the gear stick before the woman's husband, who was inside collecting laundry, ran back to the vehicle and punched Meuleman.
The man pulled the carjacker out and restrained him on the ground until police arrived at the Pakenham laundromat.
Meuleman provided a false address to officers after being arrested.
He was on bail at the time for separate burglary and theft charges, to which he has since pleaded guilty.
On Tuesday, he successfully argued his matter should stay in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, rather than a higher court, while asking for his sentencing to be deferred to attend a community rehab.
Meuleman was granted bail in August to The Cottage in Shepparton but never made it after experiencing a mental health episode.
Participants in the voluntary 12-week program could be released into the community whenever they wanted, the court was told.
"He wants to go to residential rehab to deal with this drug addiction issue and break that cycle of offending," lawyer Tom Smedley said.
The "brazen and unsophisticated" carjacking was done without violence or force, and Meuleman was focused on moving the gear stick, the lawyer said.
"It's in the context of very poor mental health and drug use," he said.
Meuleman, also known under the moniker “bike boy”, was involved in a collision with then-opposition leader Mr Andrews and his wife Catherine in 2013.
Then aged 15, he was knocked off his bicycle, thrown onto the car's bonnet and required hospital treatment.
That crash was a "turning point" in his life and had significantly affected his mental health, his lawyer told the court.
Prosecutors meanwhile argued the carjacking warrants jail time.
Magistrate Samantha Seoud denied bail, citing the fact The Cottage had not reassessed Meuleman since his August episode.
The case returns to court on December 15 for further sentence submissions.
Meuleman is suing the Andrews for defamation in the Federal Court following a statement released by the couple in 2024 labelling allegations of a police “cover-up” related to the 2013 crash as a “conspiracy theory”.
He claims the Andrews' statement was improper and he should receive aggravated damages, which the former premier and his wife have denied.
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