Jail for Leigh Park burglar who raided dead man's home

Brian Kerridge, 41, put through the front door at the unoccupied home in Meadow Lands, Warblington, just a few weeks after the man living there died.

A neighbour alerted the former householder’s grieving son on January 13 who arrived to find the front door damaged, the shed broken into and the house turned over.

‘It’s sullied a lifetime of memories at the home and the lives that were led in it,’ said prosecutor Martyn Booth, reading the son’s statement in court.

He added: ‘He feels a great sense of invasion, seeing cupboards and storage opened and casually left open afterwards.’

DNA on a key led police to Kerridge, who on January 4 had burgled a home in Beverley Grove, Farlington, Portsmouth where he smashed a side window with a brick to get in. Kerridge’s DNA was found on the brick.

He stole a £399 television, £620 worth of tools and a £60 Amazon Echo Dot from the two pensioners’ city home. He struck while they were out, between 5.45pm and when a neighbour raised the alarm at 8.45pm.

Jailing him for two and a half years, judge Roger Hetherington said the homeowners now ‘feel unable to have grandchildren over to the house, which is something they enjoyed’.

The judge added it’s likely the burglary will have this continued effect even when coronavirus lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Kerridge, of Marlands Lawn, Leigh Park, admitted two charges of burglary, and asked for another two, on January 13 and January 20, to be taken into consideration. He was arrested in late January.

Judge Hetherington said: ‘Like all burglaries the victims here have been put to considerable trouble and distress by what you did.’

Kerridge, who has 39 convictions for 86 offences, is subject to a minimum sentence as he has carried out at least three home burglaries.

Berenice Mulvanny, mitigating, said: ‘Perhaps the strongest and only mitigation he has is the fact that he entered guilty pleas.’

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