IT was just before midnight on a night in May last year when three men - all wearing hoods and face masks - climbed over a railing and walked into the Rutherford Hotel.
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It was a cold night and the middle of the pandemic so the sight was not initially alarming to the two staff members working the closing shift.
But as the barman walked over to tell the men to take off their hoods, one of them jumped over the bar, another pulled out a hunting knife and the third man began attempting to pry open a cash register with a pair of scissors.
"Get the money or I'll stab you," the man with the knife, Jerome Gordon Haines, told the barman.
Get the money or I'll stab you.
- Jerome Gordon Haines told a staff member at the Rutherford Hotel during an armed robbery in May last year.
The barman told the men to get out and attempted to fend of Haines with a "long-handled aluminium squeegee" while another staff member grabbed her phone and called triple-zero.
"Get the money, get the money, stab him," another one of the armed robbers told Haines.
While this was happening, the barman backed away from Haines and opened a cash drawer inside the gaming bar.
But when Haines didn't realise, he subtly shut it again.
Empty handed and told the police were on their way, the three men began picking up cash registers and throwing petty cash tins to the ground.
One of the robbers was headed for the door when he dropped a cash drawer.
Haines bent down to pick it up, leaving his DNA on the underside of the cash register.
He then threw the cash register to the ground and fled with the other two men to a stolen car parked nearby. All up the men stole nearly $1000. Haines, now 21, appeared in Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday via audio visual link from Mid North Coast Correctional Centre where he pleaded guilty to armed robbery.
He will next appear in Newcastle District Court next month to get a sentence date.
The two other men have not yet been identified.