The break-in was the first stop for prolific offender Matthew John Higham in a 15-hour crime spree that took him from Gorey to St Brelade and then to town.
During the offending he stole the family’s car and dumped it at Ouaisné, where it was then submerged by the sea and damaged beyond repair.
On Friday Higham, who admitted ten charges committed between 1 am and 4 pm on 28 March, was sent to prison for 3½ years.
It was claimed by the Crown that overuse of the various prescription drugs he takes for depression and other medical issues could have led to him to being ‘zombified’ at the time. Higham’s defence counsel said that to this day his client’s memory of the event remains ‘patchy’.
The court heard that the new mother, whose husband had been sleeping in a different room after returning from working late, did not know that Higham – who had 83 previous convictions – had broken in at the time and assumed that the noises she could hear downstairs was her husband and ‘things in the dishwasher’.
However, when the family and their lodger woke up the next day they discovered 29 items worth thousands of pounds missing, including musical instruments, computer equipment, cameras, car and house keys, a handbag, a driving licence, various bank cards and currency and a gold tin containing the family’s Co-op stamps.
Most of the items were recovered from the defendant’s home, while one guitar was found by a metal detectorist buried under the sand at a nearby beach.
The break-in left the family, who live in Grouville, feeling vulnerable in their own home, and the court was told that the woman had even considered counselling.
And Crown Advocate Richard Pedley told the court that the couple had been made to feel ‘anxious for months’ by the prospect of a trial after Higham refused to admit what he had done. Until yesterday he had also represented himself in court and therefore would have been allowed to cross-examine the couple had it gone to trial.
Delivering the court’s sentence, Deputy Bailiff Tim Le Cocq said: ‘It [illegal entry] involves a violation of a person’s home, which you will see how, particularly in the circumstances of one of the occupants, who was a nursing mother, such an act would have a serious and worrying effect on their sense of security.
‘We suspect that you were under the influence of medication you were taking, but you knew the effect that this medication had on you when taken to excess. Nonetheless you took it to the excess.’
The court heard that after he broke into the couple’s home he stole their blue Nissan Micra, which he then drove while disqualified from driving and without insurance. It was eventually recovered from the sea at Ouaisné the following day, having been left on the slip and submerged by the tide, which resulted in it being written off.
He used the female victim’s Mastercard to obtain services from the digital service Google Play within minutes of leaving the property, and later stole a sausage roll worth £1.15 from The Foodhall in St Brelade before riding into town on a pink and white mountain bike that belonged to a 12-year-old girl that he had stolen from outside a property in St Brelade.
Once in St Helier, Higham’s crime spree continued at Airtel Vodafone, where he stole an iPhone 6S worth £552, and then at the Powerhouse in Don Street, where he stole an Apple MacBook Air laptop worth £849.99.
Finally, at 3.46 pm – almost 15 hours after he broke into the home at Gorey – he tried once again to use the woman’s credit card to obtain services from Google Play worth £4.99. The transaction failed, however, because the woman had already stopped her bank cards.
Addressing the court on behalf of his client, defence Advocate Mark Boothman said his client’s story was a ‘sad’ one and that he had no contact with his family and no friends.
He said Higham appeared to be addicted to prescription medication and emphasised that his client had not planned any of the offending, which he described as ‘compulsive and unsophisticated’.
The lawyer added that he did not seek to excuse his client’s behaviour, but offer an explanation as to why it had happened.
Higham was also disqualified from driving for five years.
Jurats Paul Nicolle and Geoffrey Grime were sitting.
