Heroes tackle jewellers thief
THIS is the moment hero passers-by brought down a thief as he fled from a Rawtenstall jewellers.
Bungling crooks Jason Rae and Claire Shirley targeted Michael Anthony Jewellers in Rawtenstall, snatching 12 gold bracelets after posing as a couple looking at jew- ellery. But they didn’t count for hero locals preventing their escape, first by blocking in their getaway car and then by wrestling them to the ground.
Rae, 47, was jailed for 22 months at Burnley Crown Court after admitting theft while Shirley was given a suspended sentence for the same offence.
DEFENCE barrister Robin Kitching said Rae ‘accepts full responsibility for his actions’.
The court heard how Rae, who has 140 previous convictions including thefts, robberies and violence, had just been released from a five-year extended prison sentence several weeks before the incident on May 8 this year.
Mr Kitching told the court how Rae had ‘struggled to find work’ since his release from custody and had a ‘life-long addiction to drugs’.
He said: “He takes full responsibility not only for his actions but for the actions of his co-defendant. That’s not to say she wasn’t in a position to make her own decision, but if it were not for him she would never have got involved in this and he wishes to apologise to her and the court for his bad influence on her.”
Mr Kitching said it was an ‘unsophisticated theft’ that had only a ‘few minutes planning’ and that ‘what happened when he left the shop was more serious’.
Michael Blackey, defending Shirley, said ‘she is a lady in desperate need of help’.
The court heard she had 14 previous convictions for theft offences and that her criminality started seven years ago after a ‘catastrophic event in her life’.
Mr Blackey said ‘she regrets the offence’ and is now ‘drug free’ and hoping to go back to university to continue her art studies.
Recorder David Swinnerton said Rae had an ‘appalling record’ and that they had ‘deliberately distracted the shop owner by pretending to be a couple looking at jewellery’.
He told the court that they were ‘deliberately seeking relatively high value items’ and that it was a ‘relative sophisticated offence with planning’.