A DRUNKEN crook who was caught in the act as he burgled Carlisle’s Sands Centre has been sent to prison.
Mark George Kenney, 39, committed the crime less than three weeks after he was spared jail and given a suspended sentence at the city’s crown court for three fraud offences and another business break-in.
A judge today (THURS) heard how a chief technician at the Sands Centre entered a locked office, on the afternoon of February 17, and found Kenney “climbing out from under a desk”.
Kenney was drunk but – despite having a stolen tea towel and electric screwdriver “hanging out of his jacket – he claimed: “I haven’t stolen anything.” He was also in possession of stolen keys and a computer hard drive.
Judge James Adkin heard that the same technician recognised Kenney, of Warwick Road, Carlisle, having asked him to leave the Sands Centre two days before when he had found him on a stage area at the building.
Kenney admitted burglary, and was said by his lawyer to have been in a “complete and utter mess” at the time. He also accepted breaching a suspended sentence imposed in late January.
Jailing Kenney for 20 months, Judge Adkin said of his latest crime: “It was a pretty pathetic offence.”