Poppy tin thief dodges jail term

Drug addict stole charity collection from funeral parlour

A Paisley drug addict who stole a Poppy Scotland charity tin from a funeral parlour has been given a chance to turn his life around.

Kevin Wallace pinched the collection box just days before the centenary of the First World War armistice.

Paisley Sheriff Court previously heard Wallace, who has an “entrenched drug problem”, admitted stealing the tin with around £ 20 in it from Co-operative Funeralcare in Lady Lane on October 29.

He distracted staff by pretending he wanted to look at headstones, asking for a job and drawing on a visitors’ book.

At a previous hearing, Procurator Fiscal Depute Pamela Flynn explained: “Around midday on the date libelled, the accused entered the Co-operative funeral parlour.

“Around 12.30pm, one of the employees observed the accused drawing on a visitors’ book and asked the accused to leave, saying he had wasted enough of their time already.

“As he was leaving, a plastic bag he was carrying struck the front door and made the noise of coins rattling.

“At that stage, the member of staff observed that the Poppy Scotland charity tin, which had been at the front desk was now in the accused’s bag.”

Another employee tried to get the tin back, but Wallace made off and the police were contacted.

He was caught with it in his bag nearby and detained by officers but could not be cautioned and charged because he was so out of his face on drugs.

Wallace, 30, has been gripped by an addiction he has had for 17 years – since he was just 13.

Yesterday in court, he was given the chance to get clean once and for all.

Wallace should have been in jail at the time of the theft but was on the streets because he was released early from a previous sentence.

He targeted the funeral directors just four days after being released from prison, while out of his face on Valium and heroin.

It emerged that he had been at a meeting with drug workers just an hour before.

A charge that he had also stolen a charity tin from the Print and Copy store in the town’s High Street on the same date was dropped.

At a previous hearing, Wallace’s defence solicitor Charlie McCusker said he was released from prison on October 25 and committed the offence on October 29, after his appointment at Renfrewshire Drug Services, at 11am.

Mr McCusker called for Sheriff Seith Ireland to make Wallace the subject of a Drug Treatment and Testing Order, saying he last had one in 2008 and still had “an entrenched drug problem.”

Yesterday, when Wallace returned to the dock to learn his fate, he was spared prison.

Sheriff Ireland placed him on a DTTO, which will see him working with social workers to try to get clean and stay that way in a bid to stop him breaking the law.

The sentence Wallace was released early from was imposed last October at the same court for ransacking a man’s home in the town’s Lady Lane – the same street he stole the charity tin from.

Drug- addict Wallace, who has seven pages of previous convictions, swiped a camera, clothes, bags, a microphone and even drawing pins from the house.