A ‘rubbish’ burglar sneaked into a Risinghurst flat and snatched a man bag – while one of the occupants was inside.

The Firetrap bag was said to have contained ‘tacos receipts’, a passport, birth certificate, tobacco tin, Paypal business cards and military passes.

The opportunistic theft was discovered when the bag’s owner, who had left the front door to The Roundway apartment unlocked as his partner was in the flat on May 23 last year, returned home to find the door open.

Ruban Neptune, 42, was identified from the clothes he was wearing after he was snapped on a nearby shop’s CCTV.

Two days later, on May 25, he broke into a flat in London Road, Headington, while the owner was away. He returned later that day and walked off with a £170 Samsung television among other items. The lock to the patio doors had to be replaced as Neptune, who was filmed on the flat’s video-enabled doorbell, stole the key.

The court heard he was a ‘third strike’ house breaker, with convictions at Oxford and Aylesbury crown courts for burglary in 2011, 2017 and 2019.

Neptune’s barrister, Kellie Enever, asked the judge to impose a long community order with a drug rehabilitation programme as a direct alternative to sending him to prison.

He could serve custodial sentences ‘standing on his head’, the lawyer said, but needed to address the drug addiction that had ‘blighted his life’.

“He’s not a stupid man. He’s bright. But he’s blighted by drugs,” Ms Enever told the court.

“The reality is Mr Neptune is a rubbish burglar. He has been before your honour in 2017.

“His offending is inextricably linked to his drug addiction.”

Sending him inside for two years and eight months, Judge Maria Lamb said: “Ms Enever has said everything she possibly could say on your behalf. She has described you as a rubbish burglar. I am not sure I agree with that description.

“The fact of the matter is that you have since 2011 committed a variety of offences of dwelling house burglary and now you are back before this court for two more.

“I don’t doubt these are linked to your drug addiction and it may well be right to say you have lots of issues that need to be resolved.

“But you are not going to do that at the expense of the community. It is no consolation to those whose homes have been entered and from whose homes you have stolen that you have these difficulties.”

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