A BOY arrived home from school to discover a burglar who left ‘blood all over the place’.
Steven McCluskey fled with jewellery and cash after he was disturbed by the 14-year-old schoolboy at a house in Ash Green, Coventry.
Blood had been spilt while McCluskey (35) of Vicarage Lane, Ash Green, searched one of the bedrooms from where the boy heard noises, after the burglar had cut his hand on a wardrobe door.
He was jailed for four years after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to the burglary, having also admitted an earlier one in Banbury.
He was also given a concurrent 16-week sentence for cultivating cannabis plants found at his home when he was arrested.
Prosecutor Simon Worlock said the incident happened in October at the home in Woodford Close.
No-one else should have been in the house and, realising there was a burglary in progress, the schoolboy went to a neighbour’s home and the police were called.
There had been an untidy search upstairs and downstairs, and jewellery, €235 and cash tins with cash in them had been taken.
The blood spilt let to McCluskey being identified.
Observing that McCluskey, who had a large number of previous convictions, was classed as ‘a three-strike burglar,’ Mr Warlock pointed out: “These are actually his fifth and sixth burglaries.”
Told by McCluskey’s barrister that there was a letter from him, Recorder Christopher Tickle commented: “It is quite a persuasive letter – but he’s gone into two people’s homes and carried out untidy searches.”
Tom Schofield, defending, said: “It has to be a custodial sentence, but I seek to persuade you to keep it to three years.”
Conceding McCluskey had ‘an atrocious record,’ he said a childhood experience had ‘blighted his life from an early stage, and he describes his childhood as completely lost.’
Mr Schofield added: “He is now the father of a five-week-old child who he is ashamed he can’t be with at this time.”
Jailing McCluskey, Recorder Tickle told him: “You have had a lot of set-backs since coming out of prison last time; trying to get a job and not being able to get one, and your wife becoming pregnant, and you went back to what you know how to do best.
“The two burglaries you carried out both had aggravating features, an untidy search in both cases and leaving bloodstains in the second one.
“That was compounded by the fact that a 14-year-old boy came home while you were there.”
