Singing burglar snared on CCTV targeting Horndean home

Shane Hayward wept in the dock at Portsmouth Crown Court as a judge jailed him for 39 months.

The court heard a fingerprint linked him to the burgled home in Barton Cross, Horndean, and he was arrested.

The 23-year-old dad-of-one told detectives he had been walking in the road singing I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles when someone shouted at him to shut up.

He claimed he went to the window, pulled himself up and carried on singing but ran off when the occupant called 999 just after midnight on August 1.

But Martyn Booth, prosecuting, played CCTV footage from nearby Horndean Technology College showing Hayward, of Milton Road, Waterlooville, climbing up and also trying to open a car door and the boot.

Mr Booth said Hayward tried to open a window by putting his arm through a smaller window.

Talking about the resident, Mr Booth said: ‘He was lying in bed in his bedroom watching the TV when he heard a noise from the window. He opened the curtains to see a male trying to open the top right window.

‘The male then ran off out of the drive and turned left heading in the direction of the neighbouring college.’

Mr Booth said: ‘It’s left him and his wife very shaken, he’s concerned someone can do this to his house, especially while he was inside.’

Mr Booth said when arrested Hayward gave ‘a very full and as it turns out a completely false account’.

The CCTV footage shows Hayward approaching the house, and jumping up before fleeing through the college grounds holding his top up over his face.

Richard Griffiths, defending, said: ‘It’s a stupid and ill-considered, probably unconsidered, thing for him to do.’

Hayward, whose child was born only recently, had been given a suspended sentence for a previous burglary.

That saw him going into the bedroom of boy who was asleep before telling him to be quiet and then fleeing through the house confronting the boy’s mum.

Judge Ian Pearson jailed him for 29 months for the burglary and activated 10 months of the suspended term, making 39 months in all. Hayward has 21 convictions for 26 offences.

He pleaded guilty to burglary at an earlier hearing.