Suspended sentence for burglar caught on CCTV in Banbury

Just eight days before a CCTV camera filmed him creeping into the property in Bath Road on May 4 last year, Bill Mobey, 24, had been given a suspended sentence for another burglary.

Oxford Crown Court heard on Thursday (March 30) that the homeowner was alerted to the burglar’s presence at his family’s home after receiving a notification on his phone that the CCTV camera had been activated.

He was in a local pub but called his wife, who was at home, to warn her of the intruder’s presence.

The woman was ‘not sure what to do’, the court heard. She ‘panicked’, ran to the back door and ‘screamed out’ three or four times. After hearing movement in the house she ‘screamed again’.

Mobey’s reaction to the shouts could clearly be seen on the CCTV footage, which was released by Thames Valley Police after the burglar’s sentencing hearing.

Wearing his hood up, he had used his phone’s flashlight to look through the window of the house before scarpering back the way he came when he heard shouting.

The defendant was arrested and, in interview, confirmed he was the man in the footage.

He claimed that he had gone into the garden after being ‘chased by some people called the McCarthys’. The young man told police he wanted to go into the house ‘to call his girlfriend’ but ran off when he heard a scream.

Asked about why he was using a torch to look through the window he said he was ‘looking for money he had lost’.

In a victim personal statement summarised to the court, the woman who was home alone in the property said the burglary had left her ‘feeling increasingly fearful of strangers and in particular young men’.

Click here to sign up to the Crime and Court newsletter (Image: Newsquest)

Mobey, of Wimborne Avenue, Banbury, was found guilty by the magistrates in January of burglary.

He had four previous convictions and, when he committed the burglary last May was just eight days into a suspended sentence imposed for non-dwelling burglary.

Mitigating, Angela Porter asked the judge to take an exceptional course and suspend any prison sentence – despite her client committing the May burglary within days of his previous court appearance.

In the past year, Mobey had worked well with the probation service and had stayed out of trouble, she said.

Recorder John Hardy KC described burglary as ‘in one sense an offence of violence in that it violates people’s sense of security’.

But he suspended the two-year prison term for two years. He must do 140 hours of unpaid work.