A burglar who broke into a Stratford house and stole a BMW from outside was identified after a security light came on and illuminated him for a neighbour’s CCTV camera.
Joseph Banks pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to burgling the house, theft of the BMW, handling a Mercedes stolen in another burglary, and handling other stolen property.
Banks, age 23 of no fixed address was jailed for three years – but concurrent to a three-and-a-half-year sentence he was given in February.
Prosecutor Balvinder Bhatti said that in August last year a man got up to discover his partner’s car had been stolen from the drive of their home in Willow Drive, Stratford.
And when he went downstairs he found three handbags had been emptied out and his partner’s purse and car keys had been taken.
When police investigated the break-in they studied a CCTV recording from a neighbour’s security camera which showed two figures outside the address.
And Banks was recognised when a security light came on and his face was clearly illuminated.
Miss Bhatti said that in August there had been a burglary at a house in Tamworth, from where a Mercedes and a BMW were stolen.
Both cars were recovered five days later, and Banks’s fingerprints were found on the gear stick of the Mercedes.
Then later that month there was a burglary of a house in Atherstone, during which a laptop and other devices were stolen.
Later that day a stolen Ford Focus was reported to have crashed in Nuneaton – and in it the police found some of the stolen property with Banks’s fingerprints on it.
Miss Bhatti added that Banks had a number of previous convictions for offences including burglary, and in February had been jailed for a house burglary.
