A man who smashed the window of a Norris Green pawnbrokers with a hammer and stole a £3,000 gold bracelet was jailed for more than two years.
Jamie Green, 24, raided the Albemarle Bond store in Broadway on Thursday, July 23 this year, before fleeing on a scrambler bike with an unidentified man.
Liverpool Crown Court heard how Green, of Wapshare Road, Norris Green, was the passenger on the black and white motorbike.
Philip Astbury, prosecuting, said two men dressed all in black pulled up outside the shop at around 4.10pm.
He said staff tried to get the metal shutters down as Green repeatedly hit the window with the hammer, and were “showered with broken glass”.
Green made off with an 18-carat gold curb bracelet, valued at £3,038.
The Albemarle Bond pawnbrokers on Broadway, Norris Green, that was targeted by raiders who used a hammer to smash a window and steal a bracelet
But the bungling crook cut himself during the raid and his DNA was identified from blood left on broken glass. He refused to name his accomplice.
Mr Astbury said staff were unharmed but left shaken by the incident.
Green was also sentenced over an incident on Friday, May 29 this year, when he was pursued by police after he was spotted driving in a stolen Audi Quattro car at around 3pm.
The court heard he drove at speed down Childwall Valley Road, running red lights, going the wrong way around a roundabout and eventually drove the wrong way along Allerton Road.
He and a friend eventually jumped out of the vehicle and he was found by police hiding behind a parked car. Nobody was injured during the chase.
The defendant, with a large mop of curly ginger hair and wearing a tracksuit top in court, admitted burglary and dangerous driving.
Green said he did not realise the car was stolen and that when he was asked to drive it he chose a friend he trusted, even though he was prevented from associating with him under the terms of an ASBO.
He claimed that he had been forced to raid the pawnbrokers and to drive the car because he owed money to people, who he would not name.
Green said he had been threatened by these people and he was worried about his and his mum’s safety.
Judge Elizabeth Nicholls accepted that he was in debt and had worried about his family’s safety, adding that he was “not one of life’s leaders”.
But the judge said she did not believe he had been forced into committing either offence and sentenced him to 26 months in prison.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/