A MAN caused more than £2,000 worth of damage to shops in Worcester, in an attempt to find somewhere to stay the night after falling asleep on his train home.
Dennis Morris, of Winston Road, Hereford pleaded guilty at Worcester Magistrates’ Court on Friday (August 28) to smashing the window of a 3 Mobile store worth £600 and a £2,000 window in a TK Maxx shop in Worcester.
Mark Soper, prosecuting, told the court the alarm to one of the stores was set off just before midnight on
August 7, and a security officer arrived at the 3 Mobile shop 40 minutes later to find a window smashed.
He noticed the 27-year-old lying on a bench in the middle of the street paying no intention to the guard.
He saw him sit up and rub his eyes before walking around the block. The defendant took a brick, which he used to destroy the first window, and threw it at an outlet called The Office, but that window did not smash. He later discovered the damaged caused to the window of TK Maxx.
The police attended and he told them he had been stranded in Worcester because he fell asleep on the train and ended up there when it terminated.
He had no money to call anyone and thought he would cause the damage to find some where to sleep for the night. He wanted to be arrested so he would have a cell to sleep in.
Defence solicitor Mike Freeman, said: “Mr Morris has been working as a chef for ten years and he wants to go university, but he is the sort of person who can’t go the normal way so has to go to a pre-university course, in anticipation he handed in his notice at work, he went for the interview on the day this happened and was told that the qualification he had was one level to low in English which meant he could not go on the course.
“He has to go on a 36 week course to get his grade higher. Nobody had told him this and so he was depressed, he had begun to drink and got the train, he fell asleep, missed his stop and found himself in Worcester with no money and no way of getting home.
“He was seriously depressed, it is no excuse but it is not a decision he would normally make.
“He only intended to throw the bricks hard enough to set the alarm off which he succeeded with once but the other two times he threw them a bit too hard.”
Chair of the Bench, Clare Pilling, gave Morris a community order for 12 months with an unpaid work requirement of 120 hours. She also ordered him to pay £2,000 compensation to TK MAXX and £600 to 3 Mobile along with a £180 court charge, £60 victim surcharge and £85
