Woman offered to help disabled man, then stole wallet
VICTIM ‘SHOCKED BY CHEEK AND LACK OF RESPECT’
A ‘WOULD-BE’ Good Samaritan offered to help a disabled man get his wheelchair through some doors before stealing his wallet moments later.
Lexy Smith, 42, cycled past the 51-year-old man, who has cerebral palsy, outside the entrance of the Patricroft Conservative Club in Eccles.
The mum-of-one, from Cadishead, saw him struggling to get his wheelchair through the doors so got off her bike to help.
But as she assisted him, she grabbed his bag from around his neck and stole his wallet and a packet of cigarettes from inside it.
She then ran off with the wallet, which had a £10 note, two bank cards and a lottery ticket inside, leaving the complainant ‘shaken and appalled.’
Manchester Crown Court heard how Smith had initially planned to help the ‘vulnerable’ man but decided to commit the offence on the ‘spur of the moment.’
“As he approached the doors of the premises the defendant was cycling past”, prosecutor Simone Flynn told the court.
“She got off her bike and put it against the building and offered to help. She said she would assist him by opening the doors. She did open the first door for him and as she is helping she asked if he had a cigarette.
“The complainant had a bag round his neck which had cigarettes in it and his wallet.
“As he reaches into his bag to get the cigarette the defendant reached in as well and grabbed his wallet.”
There was then a struggle between
POLICE are investigating after a teenage robbery gang struck twice, an hour apart, on Sunday night.
The victims were attacked on Ashton Road, Oldham.
According to GMP, the first robbery happened at around 9.30pm.
A 17-year-old boy was riding his bike when he was targeted by a group of around six to eight teenage lads. They the two that lasted a ‘few seconds,’ but Smith managed to grab the complainant’s possessions and run away.
She was arrested eight days later and admitted the offence.
In a victim statement read to the court, the man said that ‘nothing like this’ had ever happened to him in Eccles before and that he had lived there his entire life.
He added: “I am shocked and appalled by the cheek and lack of respect this woman showed. I thought she wanted to help me but at the time she just wanted to rob me.”
In mitigation defence, David James said his client, who has 10 previous convictions for 26 offences, accepts it was a ‘serious offence.’
He said that this offence was ‘not motivated’ by the complainant’s disability and asked the judge to suspend any custodial sentence passed.
“It was a spur of the moment decision”, Mr James added.
“The defendant has not had a conviction for 15 years.
“She has a 13-year-old son who has autism who needs specialist care. He is no longer living with her.
“She has struggled with drug addiction throughout her life and lost her home several years ago, this made her to turn back to drugs.”
Judge David Hernandez agreed to suspend the sentence to give her the chance to ‘address her addiction.’
Smith, of Cumberland Avenue, Cadishead, was handed a 16-month sentence suspended for 18 months after pleading guilty to robbery.
She will also be subject of a sixmonth curfew, and have to undertake a 12-month drug rehabilitation programme and 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days. attacked him and stole his black Carrera hybrid bicycle with blue writing.
Just over an hour later, an 18-year-old man was assaulted by a group of boys who stole his Piaggio Typhoon 125 moped.
The first victim was left with minor injuries and the second went to hospital with injuries to his fingers.