Car radio thief caught red-handed in Dewsbury is sentenced

Anthony Kaye, 35, tried to take the radio from Patricia Holroyd’s MG convertible car.

Mrs Holroyd had been attending an art class at Westborough Methodist Church in Dewsbury on August 13 when she heard her car alarm going off outside.

At Kirklees Magistrates Court on Tuesday, Bill Askin, prosecuting, said Mrs Holroyd went outside to find Kaye sitting in her car.

She shouted at him twice and he ran off, leaving the car radio partly pulled out of the vehicle’s dashboard and a pool of his blood in the car.

The police were called and they found more of Kaye’s blood smeared on the front door handle of a nearby property.

They found him inside, shaking as a result of heroin withdrawal, Mr Askin said.

Simon Lindley, mitigating, said Kaye had indicated a guilty plea at an earlier hearing.

He said the defendant had started reusing heroin after the end of a relationship.

Kaye told the court: “It was a relapse. My head was all over with my break-up and me turning to heroin.”

He said he planned to attend a rehabilitation clinic for his addiction.

“I want to get myself right for my kids,” Kaye, of Green Close, Dewsbury Moor, said.

He was given a nine month supervised community order with six months of drug rehabilitation for theft from a motor vehicle.