A MAN who broke into a rural house near Solihull was arrested after he was recognised from a CCTV recording showing him wearing a distinctive yellow-lined jacket.
It was the same jacket Louis Steane had been wearing when he had broken into an office at student accommodation in Coventry, a judge has heard.
Steane (23) of Thomas Naul Croft, Tile Hill, Coventry, was jailed for 32 months after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to two charges of burglary and one of theft.
Prosecutor Jonathan Veasey-Pugh said the first offence in December last year was ‘a non-dwelling burglary, but as close as one could get to one.’
He explained that on December 9 Steane and another man broke into a communal area at the Signature Student Living premises in Shultern Lane, Coventry.
They then broke into the manager’s office by smashing a glass panel in the door and stole a television and parcels which had been delivered for students who lived there.
As a result of the break-in it cost £1,000 to repair the damage, £650 to replace the television and £3,000 for additional security measures, pointed out Mr Veasey-Pugh.
A police officer who checked a CCTV recording from the premises recognised Steane, who was wearing a noticeable yellow-lined jacket.
Then on January 3 Steane targeted a detached house in Belle Vue Terrace, in a rural location backed by fields on the edge of Hampton-in-Arden.
The retired couple who lived there had gone out for the afternoon in their BMW, leaving a Mini on the drive.
And when they returned they found their home had been broken into, with almost every room having been searched, and jewellery worth £3,000 had been stolen, together with the keys to both cars.
The Mini had been taken, and it was finally recovered on January 14 after it had collided with a bollard in Coventry.
By then Steane was in custody after he was recognised from a CCTV camera which showed him, in the same yellow-lined jacket, walking up a neighbour’s path towards the house and then driving away in the Mini 13 minutes later.
Mr Veasey-Pugh added that Steane had a number of previous convictions, and as a third-strike burglar was facing a minimum sentence of three years before being given credit for his pleas.
