A LANDSCAPE gardener who took part in a burglary at a housing development near Studley has escaped being jailed – after he was given a chance to name his accomplice.
John Davies, 41, of Spring Valley, Evesham, had been due to be sentenced earlier this year after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to a charge of attempted burglary.
But his case was adjourned after it was said he had turned over a new leaf and was willing to identify the other man involved.
And at the resumed hearing, after being told there was a hand-written statement before the court, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones sentenced Davies to nine months in prison suspended for 18 months and ordered him to do 150 hours of unpaid work.
The case centred on the burglary in June last year of storage containers at a building site in Henley Road, Outhill, near Studley.
At around 4am security guard Mark Randle was at home in bed when he received an alert of intruders at the site, which had been targeted on four or five previous occasions.
He drove there and saw two men in dark clothing.
He called his boss and the police and when he returned he saw a red van with L & J Landscaping on the side, with two men in it, which sped away with its lights off when they saw his car approaching.
He checked the site, and found the padlocks had been broken on two storage containers. Later a wheelbarrow was found filled with power tools from the containers.
The van was traced to Davies, and he was arrested at his home on June 18. The previous hearing heard that Davies had previous convictions dating back to 1992 for offences including theft, robbery, burglary and handling stolen goods, but none since 2012.
Sentencing Davies, Judge Griffith-Jones told him: “You have got a bad record, and this is not a trivial burglary.
“If you had not demonstrated the turning over of a new leaf, you may well have lost your liberty immediately. But you are not going to.”
