A BURGLAR who broke into a teenage boy’s Carlisle home as he slept and snatched birthday money from his wallet has been jailed for more than two years.
Ryan Ferguson, a 25-year-old heroin addict with two previous house intrusion crimes on his rap sheet, crept into a family’s Denton Street home during the night of September 29. Both the boy and his mother were asleep inside at the time.
They woke next morning to find the back door of the property was open, and that the 15-year-old boy’s wallet had been emptied of £90 birthday money.
Ferguson was snared by damning forensic evidence, Carlisle Crown Court hearing today how the crook’s blood was found on the wallet during a police investigation. His crime had left the mother feeling “hyper-vigilant” and “constantly unsafe and vulnerable in her own home”.
Ferguson, of Thorburn Crescent, Annan, admitted burglary which, in view of his two previously similar convictions, triggered a minimum three-year jail term.
During a sentencing hearing today (MON) he received a discount for his guilty plea from Judge Nicholas Barker, who heard how the defendant had succumbed to the “horrors of heroin”.
Judge Barker jailed Ferguson for a total of 876 days, telling him: “The purpose of the ‘third strike’ minimum sentence rule is to ensure that those who consistently and persistently commit offences of dwelling house burglary will inevitably receive lengthy custodial sentences, thereby protecting members of the public from you and your like breaking into their homes.”
