Thief took couple’s car as medics tended wife

Vehicle stolen while ambulance crew helped elderly sepsis sufferer

A brazen thief stole an elderly man’s car as paramedics attended to his seriously ill wife.

Liam Docherty, 31, nipped in the front door of Richard and Margaret Martin’s home which had been left open for ambulance personnel and took his car keys.

He even directed a paramedic who thought he was a relative into the Kirkcaldy house as he stood at their front gate.

Mr Martin, 87, saw his Volvo driven off from an upstairs window as Mrs Martin, 87, who was suffering from sepsis, was taken out to an ambulance.

Docherty, a prisoner at Perth, was jailed for 18 months when he admitted the offence and also the theft of a tablet computer from another house.

Told of his sentence at the town’s sheriff court yesterday, Mr Martin said: “I have no sympathy for him.”

Mr Martin had dialled 999 shortly after midnight on November 10, when Mrs Martin fell sick.

Two ambulances were dispatched to their home in Citron Glebe and the front door was left open while the emergency crew cleared the hallway to get Mrs Martin out.

Mr Martin kept the keys for his Volvo V60 – which was parked in a disabled parking bay – in a fruit bowl on a sideboard near the door.

He said: “The guy walked in and picked up my car keys.

“I looked outside and I saw the car lights go on and it suddenly disappeared.”

Police found the vehicle dumped a short distance away in Commercial Street.

Mr Martin said: “He had been bumping it up and down the pavements and the clutch was burned out.”

The couple were so sickened by the theft that, even after the Volvo was repaired, they decided to trade it in for a new car.

Docherty has previous convictions for similar crimes.

His solicitor Christine Hagan said he had consumed Valium and had a “significant issue” with substance misuse over the years.

Docherty was traced by police just over three hours after the theft and the Amazon Fire tablet stolen earlier from a house in Balwearie Crescent was also recovered.

The court heard that the other householder targeted initially thought her son had misplaced his tablet and when she spotted her kitchen door open thought her husband had not closed it.

Sheriff James Williamson backdated the sentence given to Docherty, who was kept in custody after his first court appearance in relation to the thefts on November 11.

I looked outside and I saw the car lights go on and it suddenly disappeared. OWNER RICHARD MARTIN