A thief took a paperboy’s bike and then broke into a flat to raid a child’s piggy bank and stole their coin collection.
Dean Wells grabbed the bicycle from outside an Elgin newsagent when the delivery boy went inside to collect the papers.
Later that day he broke into a woman’s flat and stole around £200 she kept in a piggy bank for her children, along with a number of collectable 50p pieces she had been saving for them.
Wells, 31, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit the thefts along with a charge of threatening or abusive behaviour towards staff at the newsagents who challenged him over the bicycle theft.
Fiscal depute Robert Weir told the court that it was just after 7am on February 15 last year when a paperboy for McKenzie Newsagent on Glen Moray Drive in Elgin turned up at the shop to collect the newspapers.
“On exiting the newsagents the witness discovered his bicycle had been stolen,” Mr Weir said.
A review of CCTV showed the rear wheel of the bike against the window of the store before Wells walked past and the wheel disappeared from view.
Not long after, a member of staff from the newsagents saw Wells riding the distinctive bike.
“The witness was within the shop floor when he observed the accused within the car park cycling the bicycle,” Mr Weir said.
When Wells left the bike into the communal hallway of a nearby address the man retrieved it and took it back to the shop, where he phoned the owner to tell him it had been recovered.
At around 7.45am Wells entered the shop looking to buy cigarette papers and the owner informed him he was no longer welcome as he knew he had stolen a bike from the paperboy.
Wells then became irate and told the man: “If you phone the police, I’m going to pan in every one of your windows”.
He was “shouting and swearing incoherently” in the man’s face, leaving the shop worker feeling scared.
When another member of staff asked him to leave the shop, he told them: “Don’t you f***ing start either or you will f***ing get it.”
Piggy bank raid
Later that same day a woman left her flat in Meadow Crescent, locking the door behind her.
When she returned around 1.30pm the door was open and items inside had been “rearranged as though someone had been going through it”.
“The witness has a piggy bank in her kitchen for her children, which contained about £200 in notes and coins. All the money had been removed from it,” Mr Weir told the court.
“She had collected about 20 to 25 collectable 50p pieces for her children. She had them within an envelope, which she discovered had been ripped open and the coins had been removed.”
The woman’s bank cards had also been taken.
A review of internal CCTV from the property showed Wells “rummaging through drawers and cupboards”.
Wells was arrested the following morning and found to have the woman’s cards on him.
The court heard he was also responsible for breaking into a parked vehicle in Victoria Road, Peterhead, on December 22 2021.
On this occasion, he stole a wallet and a tobacco tin.
‘On a downward spiral’
Solicitor Alannah Comerford told the court: “Mr Wells has had a rather traumatic life.”
She explained that his half-sister had been murdered when she was just five years old and Wells’ own child had died at the age of two.
She said her client had initially been prescribed valium in the wake of the trauma to which he became addicted and had been “on a downward spiral since”, using “street valium” as a means of self-medication at the time of the crimes.
She said: “He was committing crime to try and obtain funds to purchase more drugs.”
Ms Comerford told Sheriff Eilidh MacDonald that Wells was “remorseful and regretful” about how he had behaved towards the newsagents.
She explained that he had believed he was breaking into the home of a drug dealer who had “ripped him off” when he targeted the mother’s flat.
“It was his intention to get the money back,” she said.
‘You have caused distress and anguish to other people’
The defence agent explained that, since being taken into custody Wells had taken advantage of services at HMP Grampian and was now “drug-free”.
Jailing Wells for eight months, Sheriff MacDonald said: “I do not accept your explanation in relation to charge six.
“You knew exactly whose flat you were breaking into – the piggy bank you emptied would have given you a clue that it wasn’t your drug dealer friend.
“I accept you have suffered trauma in the past but you have caused distress and anguish to other people.
“If you don’t stop this cycle now you are just going to find yourself in and out of jail again and again”
