A burglar has been jailed after targeting a string of sleeping OAPs in retirement homes.
Luke Warren, 30, of Seaforth Road, Westcliff, was sentenced at Southend Crown Court on Wednesday (September 10).
One victim awoke to find him climbing through her window, while another looked up as she sorted out her medication before bed and found him standing over her.
Warren also targeted two mosques in one night, stealing a charity collection box from one which is believed to have contained around £5,000.
“The public rightly expects that people who commit crimes like this will receive appropriate punishment from the court,” said the judge, Recorder Ben Irwin.
Sentencing Warren to four years in prison, he praised several of the elderly victims – including two 92-year-old women – for their bravery in attending court.
“Thank you all so much for your dignity,” he told them. “Welcome to the criminal justice system.”
The court heard victim impact statements in which Warren’s victims described suffering anxiety, insomnia, loss of confidence and loss of trust in others after he invaded their home.
Several said they had felt too frightened to even open their windows during the recent heatwaves, for fear somebody would break in again.
“They are the sort of people whose last years might be overshadowed by something that could feel to them to be an ever-present, pervading fear and nervousness,” said the judge.
The court heard Warren - an addict, dependent on crack cocaine since his teens - had convictions for 95 previous offences, 62 of which were for theft or dishonesty.
He had been released from a previous prison sentence on June 4.
On June 6, he stole a charity box from a pizza restaurant in Station Road. When the owners posted CCTV stills online to try to identify Warren, an anonymous poster – presumably Warren – responded with a photograph of the stolen charity box smashed open.
“Stealing a charity tin from a takeaway is a terrible thing to do and I don’t doubt that you knew it,” said Mr Irwin.
Weeks later, Warren stole another charity box, this time from a mosque in Chelmsford Avenue.
It had been collecting funds for seven or eight months, which would ordinarily have amounted to around £5,000.
He targeted a second mosque in West Road that night but was interrupted before he could steal anything.
“I suspect the public will be rightly shocked that a place of worship, whatever faith it happens to be, should be targeted in that way,” said Mr Irwin.
Over several days in late June, he targeted six residents at elderly people’s homes in Salisbury Avenue and Hamlet Court Road.
“You kept going back to the same place because you regarded it as an easy target because of the vulnerable individuals therein,” said the judge.
He also stole a BMX bike – a child’s birthday present – from a garden in Hamlet Road, and stole a Hugo Boss jumper from a parcel inside a block of flats in West Road.
“This was a campaign of burglaries targeted on the residents of Westcliff-on-Sea,” said the judge.
“It is particularly serious given these were retired people sleeping in their beds.”
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