Thief stole medals and a gold chain from friend’s room
CAREER CRIMINAL BROKE INTO ROOM AT HOSTEL TO TAKE THE JEWELLERY AND KEEPSAKES
AN ADDICT with a long list of crimes to his name stole three medals and a gold chain after breaking into his friend’s room.
Career criminal Kynan Shepherd took the items that belonged to his victim’s father when he knew he would be out.
The 35-year-old sneaked into a hostel to steal the sentimental items, Derby Crown Court heard. He had spent the previous evening with the man and overheard him say he had left the chain in a bedside drawer.
Shepherd has spent almost half of his life behind bars, and after he had taken the items he later locked himself in a toilet at his partner’s address and tried to inject himself with heroin in a suicide attempt before the police arrived.
After being taken to hospital due to the overdose, he assaulted a female police officer in a bid to escape.
Jailing him for three-and-a-half years, Judge Shaun Smith KC said: “You have got a terrible record, terrible, and you know that. The court, not this court, was prepared to give you a chance with a suspended sentence in October last year.
“But within a month you saw the opportunity to go to a man’s house because you knew he was not there and had left his gold chain there. You are more than a third-strike burglar and you have been in prison many times before.”
Shepherd, of Edward Street, Hartshorne, was out with the victim and another mutual friend on November 3, last year, Steven Taylor, prosecuting, said. He said the friend asked the victim why he was not wearing the gold chain he normally had around his neck, and he replied that it was at his home because the chain was broken.
The prosecutor said: “The complainant was due to be spending the night at his partner’s address and went there. But he could not sleep and went to take his dog for a walk. As he did so he saw the defendant in High Street, Newhall, heading towards Swadlincote. He spoke to him and continued on his way.
“He went home about 10.30am and when he got to his hostel he saw that his room had been burgled. The gold chain and three medals, which were his father’s, had been taken from his bedside drawer.
“He was able to view CCTV and recognised the defendant climbing through an unsecure window at around 5.15am that morning.”
Mr Taylor said officers went to Shepherd’s partner’s address to arrest him, but he had locked himself in the toilet and was in the process of injecting himself with a heroin-filled syringe to take his own life.
When officers took him to hospital he assaulted the female officer by pushing her in the face. Shepherd pleaded guilty to burglary, assault of an emergency worker and being in breach of a suspended sentence imposed just a month before the burglary for four shop thefts.
Matthew Cullen, mitigating, said since being remanded into custody his client, who appeared over a video-link from HMP Nottingham, has secured enhanced prisoner status and is weaning himself off heroin with the help of methadone and other anti-psychotic drugs.
He said: “He tells me his mother lives in Portugal and he has aspirations of joining her there on his release and getting a clean start.”