Burglar jailed for targeting Leeds home where mum and children slept

Daniel Martin targeted the home on Rathmell Road in the Halton Moor area and took the the woman’s Ford Focus after picking up the keys.

Leeds Crown Court heard that Martin had previously stayed at the woman’s house and knew that she left the kitchen window ajar.

Prosecutor Jade Edwards said the woman received a call in the early hours of July 18, 2020, to say her car was missing from outside her house.

She found the window had been been fully opened, and the front door was also open.

The car was later found in the car park of the Britannia Hotel in Leeds, with two sets of finger prints belonging to 25-year-old Martin and a second man, asylum seeker Mohammad Majid.

It later transpired that Majid had seen Martin struggling behind the wheel of the stolen Focus, and so drove the car to the hotel for him.

The court was told that Martin later contacted the woman to admit he had taken her car, that he had been on drugs and apologised via Facebook, whoch the woman refused to accept.

The car was worth £650 but was written off after damage was caused following the theft.

Martin, of Clyde Chase, Armley, has multiple convictions including thefts and a non-dwelling burglary.

He admitted burglary and theft of the car.

Mitigating, Michael Walsh said: “The rationale for these offences are almost inexplicable.

"He was in the midst of his excessive consumption of alcohol, and there was no particular financial motivation.

"He took no opportunity to take any items of value from the house.”

The Recorder of Leeds, Guy Kearl QC told Martin: “You took advantage of knowledge you had having lived there.

"It was a mean and nasty offence committed when you were intoxicated.

"The only appropriate sentence is one of imprisonment.”

Majid, 25, who is now living in an asylum centre in East Yorkshire, was handed a conditional discharge after admitting taking a motor vehicle without consent and handling stolen goods. He was also banned from driving for six months.