No show at court hearing

A serial Perth shoplifter, previously arrested at the doors of Perth Sheriff Court wearing a jacket she had nicked minutes earlier from a city centre department store, failed to turn up for a community payback order review this week.

Twenty-eight-year-old Darlene Mullen, previously of Stronsay Court, North Muirton, has now been ordered to appear personally on October 14, when she has another case to be dealt with.

She admitted that on June 11, 2019, she stole a quantity of electrical and electronic items, along with a number of DVDs, from Boots, in Perth High Street.

She was subject to five separate bail orders, all from the Perth court, at the time.

Solicitor Paul Ralph said he had written to his client but could offer no explanation for her‘no show.’

“It seems she has kept in touch with the social work department,”he added.

During the coronavirus lockdown, however, she had appeared in Dundee Sheriff Court on a theft charge.

Sheriff Gillian Wade, who imposed the unpaid work - a direct alternative to a jail term - deferred sentence until the autumn and asked for an update on her progress.

Brazen Mullen made headlines in 2018 after she helped herself to a £25 jacket from Primark to protect herself from Storm Ali as it battered the country in September, 2018.

But she was nabbed by police as she turned up late, co-incidentally for another community payback order review.

The accused, who was living in Nimmo Place at that time, was jailed for a total of 90 days for the theft.