A Carlisle burglar who raided city homes in the dead of night and snatched personal possessions from a bedroom as a child and mother slept has been jailed for 40 months.
Serial offender Ricky O’Neil, 37, first broke into a house on Kingstown Road on September 3 by smashing a patio door while a family were out for Sunday dinner.
He stole military watches valued at several thousand pounds from the male householder’s man cave, along with other sentimental items including a Thunderbirds metal figure set, which the intruder offloaded at a Cash Generator store.
O’Neil left his fingerprint on a tin containing valuables. Carlisle Crown Court heard the family, including an eight-year-old girl, were profoundly affected, upped security and installed bars on a window.
Police later interviewed and released O’Neil but he embarked on a crime spree overnight on October 3, committing three more burglaries and attempting one more.
He stole three NHS hoodies from a department at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary after being admitted for examination following arrest.
Having discharged himself, he then broke into two homes on Dalston Road. He snatched two phones as he sneaked into a bedroom while a woman and her three-year-old son slept just inches away. The husband was in the attic.
O’Neil stole belongings and left a hospital wristband bearing his name at the scene. The husband later spoke of feeling dirty in the aftermath when he thought of what O’Neil might have touched, while his wife described being scared, vulnerable and violated.
She also said: “I don’t get easily scared. I used to work in the Navy, going after pirates and people traffickers, but this scared me. How could somebody do that?”
At a second property on the same street occupied by a retired couple, an elderly lady woke to see O’Neil sneaking around the end of her bed in darkness. He stole personal possessions and the woman later said she had never experienced anything like it during 43 years at that house.
O’Neil’s attempt to break into a home on Colville Terrace also had a profound impact on that householder. An epilepsy sufferer, he had been seizure-free for six years but he suffered three or four seizures in the days afterwards which he put down to the stress of the incident.
O’Neil admitted four burglaries and one attempt. The court heard he had 13 dwelling house burglary convictions on his record, triggering a mandatory minimum jail term of three years.
Judge Nicholas Barker heard O’Neil, of Rydal Place, Carlisle, had relapsed into drugs before committing the offences and had little recollection of them. “He fully acknowledges distressed caused to homeowners,” said his barrister, Kim Whittlestone.
Jailing O’Neil, Judge Barker said of the victims’ impact statements: “They all describe the impactful, damaging worrying effects of your intrusion into their properties. Theft of items from properties is hurtful and upsetting but it is the invasion of privacy that is the root of the offending.”
