Thieves stole £15,000 worth of property from Brinklow homes - The Rugby Observer

Thieves stole £15,000 worth of property from Brinklow homes

Rugby Editorial 16th Jan, 2020   0

THIEVES who escaped with £15,000 worth of jewellery and other property after burgling two Brinklow houses on the same day were caught after the police tracked their get-away car.

And at Warwick Crown Court, Ryan Sullivan and Kyle Puffett pleaded guilty to carrying out the two burglaries in the village of Brinklow.

Sullivan, 25, of Wyken Croft, Coventry, who also admitted a later offence of dangerous driving, was jailed for a total of three-and-a-half years and banned from driving for four years and nine months.

Puffett, also known as Kyle Ludford, 27, of Newtown Road, Bedworth, was jailed for two-and-a-half years – but consecutive to a 38-month sentence he is already serving from March last year.




Prosecutor Ian Speed said that in June last year a Skoda estate car was seen acting suspiciously in the Brinklow area.

A local farmer who saw the car with four men in it in a country lane noted down part of the registration number and passed it to the police.


That afternoon a woman returned to her home in the village to find the back door had been forced open and jewellery and electric items worth around £7,000 had been stolen.

Half an hour later another woman got back to her home in Heath Lane, to find her back door had also been forced open and £8,000 worth of cash and jewellery had been stolen.

Car keys had been taken from both houses, but no cars had been outside to be stolen, said Mr Speed.

The police trawled through CCTV recordings to identify the Skoda spotted by the farmer, which was on false number plates having been stolen from Cheltenham in May.

They located it in Bedworth, and inside they found some of the stolen jewellery, as well as receipts from jewellers in Birmingham and Coventry where other items had been sold.

When CCTV cameras from car parks in those areas were checked, they showed three men paying for car parking tickets for the Skoda.

And police officers recognised two of them as Sullivan and Puffett, who both had previous convictions.

They were arrested, and at their homes officers found a variety of newly-purchased clothing, but they made no comment when interviewed and initially pleaded not guilty.

Sullivan was on bail, and on July 19 last year he was seen behind the wheel of a car in the London Road area of Coventry by a police officer who mistakenly believed he was disqualified.

So the officer began to follow him, at which Sullivan sped away, doing a u-turn in the face of oncoming traffic and failing to obey a no entry sign during a four-mile pursuit which was eventually called off because of the risk to other drivers.

Simon Hunka, for Puffett, asked the judge to consider what the total sentence would have been if he was being dealt with at the same time as he was given the 38-month sentence last year for offences including affray and handling stolen property.

He argued that it was all part of a pattern of offending committed around the same time.

And Simon Burch, for Sullivan, pointed out he had been given 11 months for his part in the same affray, by which time he had already been interviewed about the burglary.

Of the burglaries, he added: “This was a single criminal expedition. At the time he felt he had lost direction, and he was desperately lost. He’s shown insight into the effects the offences will have had, and has reflected on that while in prison.”

Jailing the two, Judge Peter Cooke told them: “The two of you were part of a team on four burglars who, using a car that had been stolen and put on false number plates, took yourselves off to the village of Brinklow and set about breaking into two houses.

“The haul between the two was about £15,000, but the real seriousness is the misery you brought to two separate households.

“You took some of the booty to the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter to sell to people naïve enough or dishonest enough, and I suspect the latter, to buy it – just to buy yourselves new trainers, or whatever.

“Now you are going to be locked up for some time. That should tell you something about the lifestyle choices you have made.”

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