Car thief jailed for nine months

Sentencing a car thief to nine months in prison, a sheriff said: ‘If the police had not stopped you on the motorway, I doubt this vehicle would have been seen again.’ Nicholas Leigh Baynham, 30, of 24 Rhyd Y Felin, Llansamlet, Swansea, appeared for sentencing, in handcuffs from custody, last Thursday, having previously failed to appear at Campbeltown Sheriff Court on August 25 last year. Baynham had previously pleaded guilty to stealing the BMW from Brunswick Street, Tarbert, on October 20, 2016. Earlier, procurator fiscal depute Eoin McGinty told the court that Baynham had met the owner of the car the night before while drinking in Tarbert. The following morning he had gone to her house at 9am on the pretext of having left his mobile phone behind. During the visit, he pocketed the car keys. Some hours later the car passed through Inveraray. It was spotted by a policeman who knew of the car’s owner but noted it was being driven by a man in a blue top with fair hair. Track The owner later reported the car as stolen and a notice was put out to the police to track it using automatic number plate recognition cameras. The car was spotted on the M8. Later, at 2.41pm, it was spotted on the A1 going south in England. At 7.41pm, police stopped the car and Baynham got out and said: ‘It was me. I took the car because I wanted to go home to Wales.’ The car said to be worth £10,000 was undamaged and eventually returned to its owner. In mitigation, Baynham’s defence solicitor, Stephen MacSporran, said: ‘He pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity in July 2017. ‘He had been working on a Clyde tour boat and had not been paid.’ Sheriff Patrick Hughes said: ‘You have a long record of dishonesty including similar cases of taking cars.’ For the failure to appear at court Baynham was sentenced to two months imprisonment and seven months for stealing the car.