By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 09:40, Monday, 29 August 2011

A burglar who broke into a house where an 87-year-old man suffering from Alzheimer’s was sleeping has been sent to prison for five years.

Scott Walpole: Crashed into a taxi, knocking its driver unconscious, after a high-speed chase

Scott Walpole’s raid on the old man’s house in Baggrow, near Aspatria, was just one of several offences the prolific criminal admitted at Carlisle Crown Court.

Others included a burglary at Penrith and a high-speed car chase that ended when the 21-year-old crashed into a taxi in Carlisle.

The court heard that Walpole, who had been living in Raffles Avenue, Carlisle, moved away from the city last year to live on the Fylde coast in Lancashire.

But on November 22 he returned to Cumbria to steal a pick-up truck from a remote property near Cockermouth.

After trading the vehicle in at a scrapyard he and three accomplices struck at Mr James Armstrong’s house in Baggrow, where his father was sleeping.

They managed to get into and out of the house without waking the old man, but escaped only with an empty safe.

Mr Armstrong junior spotted them as they made their getaway and took the registration number of the car, so Walpole could be traced.

But on February 4 Walpole – this time alone – struck again, at a house in Cold Springs Court, Penrith.

He stole jewellery, antique silver, two cameras and passports, and a set of car keys which he used to drive away the BMW parked outside.

He stopped for petrol – and drove off without paying – and when police later spotted him driving that car in Carlisle they tried to stop him, but he sped away at high speed.

Some witnesses reckoned he was doing 80mph along city streets with 30mph speed limits, and another said that shortly before he crashed into a taxi in Wigton Road he was travelling at about 100mph.

The taxi driver was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken foot and his £7,000 car was a write-off.

Walpole pleaded guilty to two burglaries, a theft, making off without payment, and aggravated vehicle taking.

Judge Peter Hughes QC jailed him for a total of five years.

Of the Baggrow burglary, he said: “It is a matter of pure good fortune that the man slept through what happened and so was not aware of your presence.”

Michael Roberts, 23, of Egremont Avenue, Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, who pleaded guilty to the burglary at Mr Armstrong’s house at Baggrow was jailed for two years.

First published at 08:56, Saturday, 27 August 2011
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk