A BURGLAR was spared jail after a judge said his girlfriend’s miscarriage took him “to the brink”.

Wayne Axtell, 30, admitted breaking into a home Brookfield Crescent, Headington, on September 21, his fifth burglary.

Axtell, of Park Close, Yarnton, had gone back into drug misuse because of his girlfriend’s miscarriage, said Graham Bennett, defending.

He said: “He demonstrated after his release on his previous sentence that he could deal with things for some time.

“He had a six-month period showing negative tests and he obtained employment.”

Prosecutor Jonathan Stone said Axtell was caught “red-handed” by police outside the home.

He said: “There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of soiling or ransacking.

“Thankfully the offence took place when the victim was not in, he was on holiday.”

Judge Christopher Compston gave Axtell a community order with a 12-month supervision order, a six-month drug rehabilitation requirement and a three-month residential requirement at Oxford Crown Court on Friday.

He said: “He is on a cliff edge. I am not going to push him off the edge.”

Though guidelines recommend three years in prison for the offence, he said this would be “unjust” given his circumstances.

He said: “Your girlfriend had a miscarriage, that took you to the brink.”

But he said: “If you blow it, you blow it, and you will go down and frankly never really come out of the system.”