A thief who walked into family’s home and disturbed a mother putting her child to bed has been ordered to complete unpaid work.
Adam McQuarrie told the mum that the vehicle he was travelling in had broken down outside and needed fuel.
But when he left the couple discovered that £630 of garden tools had been taken.
McQuarrie, 30, appeared at Tain Sheriff Court for sentencing having previously admitted a single charge of theft in relation to the incident at Lamington, near Tain, on June 15 last year.
At an earlier hearing fiscal depute Naomi Duffy-Welsh said that the mother was putting her four-year-old to bed when she heard someone moving around in the property and assumed it was her husband.
But when she looked up McQuarrie had poked his head around the door.
Leaf blower and a trimmer stolen
The man apologised for scaring her and told her he was looking for help because the vehicle he was travelling in had broken down nearby.
The woman had not heard anyone knocking at her door before McQuarrie entered.
The woman’s husband, who was woken by the sound of someone in the house, went to explore and found that items had been disturbed.
A leaf blower and a strimmer had been taken.
Police called to the scene found the missing equipment in the rear compartment of a white pickup truck stopped nearby.
Unpaid work
Ms Duffy-Welsh said that on the same date the occupant of a nearby property heard a knock at their door at around 9.45pm and opened it to find two children on the doorstep. The pair said that their father’s vehicle had broken down and he needed diesel.
The driver of the pickup confirmed that McQuarrie had been a passenger in the vehicle when it stopped. He said he did not know how the tools came to be in the pickup.
McQuarrie was later identified as the man who had been present in the family’s home.
Solicitor Ashley Pollock, for McQuarrie, now of Holytown Road, Holytown, North Lanarkshire, said her client had been in the grips of drug addiction at the time of the offence.
Sheriff Gary Aitken ordered McQuarrie to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work in the community over the next 12 months.
