House raiders are all heart as they are jailed

A COUPLE made heart signs to each other with their hands when they appeared in court via videolink from their respective prisons.

- JASON EVANS Court and crime reporter

Bobbie Kittle and Anthony Williams were being sentenced for creeping into a house in the middle of the night and stealing a car which was then involved in a police pursuit during which tyre-busting stingers were used and a Taser stun gun was drawn.

Emily Bennett, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that on the morning of June 9 the owner of a Citroen DS4 living in the Sandfields area of Swansea woke to find the keys to his car were missing from the living room table where he had left them the night before, and that his vehicle was not parked where he had left it.

The burglary was reported to police, and at 11.30am that day a helicopter from the National Police Air Service spotted the stolen Citroen in Rhymney.

Ground units were sent to intercept the car and a stinger device was deployed to puncture its tyres. The court heard that the Citroen reversed away at speed from the waiting stinger and it was only the quick reactions of the pursuing police officer which avoided a collision.

The prosecutor said the Citroen turned around and drove off, and the pursuit continued along Rhymney High Street. A second stinger was then deployed, and in an effort to avoid the device the stolen car swerved off the road and crashed into a fence.