9:00am Friday 30th July 2010
A MAN who burgled the staff flats above a Leominster restaurant on Christmas Day has been jailed.
Samuel Mellor, aged 22, admitted the raid on the Jalalabad Tandoori restaurant in Etnam Street and also pleaded guilty to failing to surrender to police.
Christopher Jervis, prosecuting, said the restaurant manager and a customer searched for the offender after discovering the burglary and they recovered some of the stolen property from a flat nearby.
After police were called, Mellor's name was mentioned and he was arrested.
When interviewed by officers he made no comment.
Mr Jervis said most of the electrical items, food, alcohol and mobile telephones that had been stolen were recovered but £1,600 in cash was never found.
Mellor, of Llanthony Road, Gloucester, was also in breach of a suspended sentence previously imposed for affray.
Jason Coulter, defending, told Gloucester Crown Court that Mellor’s life had been blighted by alcohol, drugs and homelessness and over a seven-year period.
Mellor had accumulated 19 previous convictions involving 54 sets of offences. Mr Coulter said Mellor had no recollection of the burglary as last Christmas had “disintegrated into a haze of narcotics and alcohol”.
Judge Michael Harington told Mellor he had an “appalling record” but was encouraged by the fact he appeared determined to overcome his addictions.
He sentenced Mellor to 10 months behind bars for the Leominster burglary, nine months in jail for breaching the suspended sentence and one month for failing to surrender to police.
All sentences will run consecutively.
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