A drug addict who stole more than £35,000 from her employers has walked free from court.

Book-keeper Carole Yolland stole £35,704 from the former Morris Photographic Centre in High Street, Oxford, to fund her £500-a-day heroin and crack cocaine habit.

Oxford Crown Court heard the mother-of-two was responsible for banking the shop's takings but kept most of the cash for herself.

Lucy Tapper, prosecuting, said: "It would appear she was banking cheques and most of the cash takings were not being banked."

Yolland started working at the shop in July 2005 after securing the job through an agency.

She had admitted stealing the cash between July 2005 and January 2006. Four further charges of false accounting were ordered to lie on the file.

James Haskell, defending, said Yolland, now of Worcester Road, Kingswood, Bristol, had kicked her habit.

Handing Yolland a 10-month jail sentence yesterday, suspended for 18 months, Judge Julian Hall said: "You have made a determined effort to turn your life around.

"By the thinnest of whiskers I am going to suspend the sentence."