Taxi call gives blundering Grangetown burglar away A BLUNDERING burglar phoned a taxi from his victims’ home - then gave his name and address and tried to pay the fare with a stolen laptop.
Drunken James Edward Bedford and his accomplice used the home landline to call a taxi as their getaway vehicle.
The 3am call, with ring-back, led to Bedford’s arrest, Teesside Crown Court heard.
The intruders snuck into the unlocked home on South Avenue, Redcar, stole a laptop while a family slept upstairs, and called the taxi.
Bedford gave his name and address to the cab driver.
Then the 20-year-old offered the stolen £350 laptop to the driver as payment.
The pair ran from the suspicious driver’s car in the early hours of November 27 last year, said prosecutor Victoria Lamballe.
Hours later, the Redcar family awoke to find that the laptop and a camera were missing from their living room.
One of the family recalled the phone ringing in the middle of the night, and they discovered the call to the taxi firm.
Police spoke to the taxi driver, who remembered Bedford and the laptop offer.
Arrested a week later, Bedford claimed he knocked and went into the house just to phone the taxi, and the unidentified lad with him stole the laptop.
CCTV footage gave the lie to his account, showing the two men pacing up and down before going into the home.
The family who lived there said they were disgusted with Bedford’s actions.
Bedford, of Tennyson Close, Grangetown, admitted the burglary - his first conviction.
Duncan McReddie, defending, said: “This was clearly not a planned or a particularly effective burglary, given the way in which the miscreants were fool enough to ring for a taxi from the landline and even ask for a ring-back, and then give their home address to the taxi driver, obviously carrying stolen property.
“It’s an unpleasant incident but it’s out of character for this defendant.
“As is all too frequent in this court, the explanation is that he was drunk. He knows that is not an excuse.” The judge, Recorder Tahir Khan QC, said violating the sanctity of people’s homes caused great distress.
In most cases, prison was the only way to deal with burglars, and he told Bedford he’d come close to going away.
“If I took the view that this was a sophisticated, well thought out burglary, then you would have been going into custody this afternoon,” he said.
“This wasn’t a sophisticated offence. What happened here was foolish, out of character behaviour by a young man.
“You don’t represent a danger to the public and it’s unlikely that you’ll commit an offence of this gravity again. I suspect you’ve learned your lesson.”
He gave Bedford a one-year prison sentence suspended for a year with supervision and 200 hours’ unpaid work.
Bedford, who is on benefits, got into a taxi as he left court.
source:
http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teess ... z1viX4lWVx
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