A PROLIFIC ROBBER was caught holding a kitchen knife to his throat after he escaped from prison and went on a robbery spree across Oxfordshire.

Anthony Martin absconded from HMP Ford in West Sussex on November 21 last year where he was serving a six-year sentence for several robbery offences.

The 44-year-old then went on a ‘spree to acquire money and drugs’ by masking up and threatening shop staff across the county.

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He was caught riding a bike in Wolvercote three days later, holding a knife up to his throat as police caught him. However, he was arrested and made full admissions at Abingdon Police Station.

Judge Ian Pringle sentenced him to five years and eight months on top of his current sentence at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday (February 1).

Opening the case, prosecuting barrister Naomi Perry said Martin had been sent to HMP Rochester, a secure prison, after being sentenced at Southampton Crown Court on February 1, 2023.

He was then moved to HMP Ford, an open prison, on November 14, despite his requests that he ‘wasn’t ready’.

After a meeting in an outbuilding on November 21, Martin ‘walked out’ of the prison shortly after 1.30pm. He was discovered missing when he wasn’t at roll call at 4.30pm.

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He first travelled to Chichester where he went into a Holland and Barrett store masked and asked for money from the safe. He stole £470 in cash, leaving a store worker feeling ‘shocked and anxious’.

Martin then travelled to Banbury where he went into Cash Converters in High Street and pretended to hold a knife up to a cashier’s back in an attempt to steal money.

Leaving with nothing after staff pushed him out, he travelled to Oxford where he stole £825.50 worth of medicine and perfume from Rowlands Pharmacy in Banbury Road, Oxford

He also attended a money exchange and held a knife to his abdomen and said to staff: “You choose, life or money.”

Martin was later caught riding a bike in Elmthorpe Road, Wolvercote where police struck his leg slowing him down before he was arrested, holding a knife to his own throat.

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The court heard that Martin is ‘ashamed of himself’. He told his barrister: “I’m struggling with what I’ve done to these people, I’m disgusted with myself.”

It was heard Martin had been a drug addict and went ‘through a breakdown’ after experiencing an undisclosed trauma before he was jailed last year.

Martin, of no fixed abode, said he ‘only has himself to blame’ due to his ‘own stupidity’.