6 days ago
Brazen Byker thief stole £10,000 piece of art from Newcastle city centre gallery
A piece of art worth almost £10,000 was stolen by a serial crook who walked into a Newcastle gallery and helped himself to it. Christopher Scott, who has more than 100 offences on his record, took the Mr Brainwash Spray Can piece from it's stand, snapped a security cable, and wandered off with it, a court heard.
The brazen theft happened at Clarendon Fine Art gallery, in Newcastle city centre, in February last year. Newcastle Crown Court the artwork was valued at £9,950. Now Scott, who also burgled a house and a building site, has been jailed for more than three years.
The court heard that in May last year, he stole power tools worth more than £4,000 from a building site on Collingwood Street, Newcastle. He and an accomplice were captured on CCTV and identified.
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He also broke into a woman's house in April, stealing a laptop worth £500, £500 of coins and several bottles of spirits. When he was arrested, he was in possession of cocaine.
Scott, 44, of The Chevron, Byker, Newcastle, who has 130 previous convictions, including 58 for theft and similar, pleaded guilty to theft of the piece of art, two burglaries and possessing cocaine. He was jailed for a total of 1,240 days.
Jonathan Cousins, defending, said: "He's has a long-standing drug addiction since he was a child and he had a difficult upbringing.
"He has PTSD as a result of being stabbed in the late 1990s and his life has been marred by custodial sentences, being released in circumstances where he is homeless and returning to drug addiction and offending. He is extremely remorseful, especially for the burglary offence."
