Thief ransacked house just days after jail release

Notorious offender back behind bars for break-in

A tooled-up crook who ransacked a man’s home has been caged for two years.

Notorious Kevin Wallace, 29, who once featured on a police list of Paisley’s worst offenders, targeted victim Zhihao Wao’s property in the town’s Lady Lane on June 26, when he broke in and stole a string of the householder’s possessions.

Scar-faced drug-addict Wallace, who has seven pages of previous convictions, swiped a camera, clothes, bags, a microphone and even drawing pins from his victim’s house.

Paisley Sheriff Court heard the accused, currently banged up a HMP Low Moss, carried out the raid only days after he had been released from jail after serving a stretch for another crime spree.

Yesterday Wallace appeared for sentencing after pleading guilty to carrying out the break-in and stealing the items and to a separate charge of being in possession of the blade in the town’s Lady Lane on June 26.

Defence agent Terry Gallanagh appealed to the court to show mercy to Wallace, who has been addicted to drugs since he was a youngster.

He said: “I understand that a prison sentence will be upper most in your lordship’s mind in disposing of these matters, but I would ask the court to consider an alternative to custody such as a drug treatment and testing order with supervised release.

“All of his offending has been drug related. He has had a drug problem since most people didn’t know what drugs were, since he was a young child, when he developed a drug habit.

“It has been for 16 years of his life and now, at the age of 29, he has thrown his life away.”

Wallace was banged up in for two years after embarking on a midnight crime rampage in April 2016, breaking into a bus, raiding a supermarket and stealing fuel from a garage.

He had been released on licence after serving half of that sentence when he carried out the break-in in Paisley.

Sheriff Tom McCartney told the accused there was only one way of dealing with the offences when he accused appeared in the dock before him.

He said: “First of all this crime was committed when you had been released early on licence from a sentence for exactly similar offending.

“And having regard to the nature of the offence, and that you had been released early, I am going to make an order returning you to prison.”

He handed Wallace a total of 24 months for the break-in and for the breach of his early release conditions, and added he would subject to supervision for five months when he is freed from prison.