AFTER being foiled in his bid to rob a Brandon hotel employee of her car keys as she arrived for work early one morning, a man broke into a nearby house to steal the keys to the owner’s car.
But despite pleading guilty to the attempted robbery and the burglary of an occupied house, Dean Lindon was jailed for just 12 months by a judge at Warwick Crown Court.
Lindon, 40, of George Eliot Street, Nuneaton, was given a consecutive eight-week sentence for a later offence of dangerous driving, which he also admitted.
The court heard that at 6.20 in the morning on March 21 a woman was arriving for work at the Brandon Hall Hotel in Brandon when Lindon put his hand up to stop her.
He told her the car park was full, and that the police were at the hotel and wanted to speak to her – and he then grabbed her wrist and tried to pull the key from the ignition.
But he was foiled when the quick-thinking woman pressed the button to close the window, and as he withdrew his arm she drove off and alerted security staff at the hotel.
Lindon made off, but shortly afterwards an elderly woman was upstairs at her home in Main Street, Brandon, when she heard the sound of breaking glass.
She looked out of the window and saw her car being driven away – so she called the police, and Lindon was identified from DNA found at the scene.
Ten days later, before he had been arrested, he was seen driving a white Audi A3 in Wyken Croft, Wyken, Coventry, at 4.25 in the morning.
The police followed him and put on their blue light, at which he sped away, reaching up to 84 mph in the residential area before losing control on a right-hand bend.
The Audi hit a wall and flipped onto the driver’s side where it came to rest, and after Lindon was pulled out of the car and arrested, he was found to be under the influence of drink and drugs.
Jailing Lindon, who had previous convictions for offences including dangerous driving, Recorder Marc Brown also banned him from driving for a total of three years and four weeks.
Recorder Brown told him: “You were suffering from a psychotic illness, aggravated or induced by drugs and alcohol.”
