A PROFESSIONAL burglar who threatened shop staff with a walking stick and shouted: "I will have you" has been jailed.

 

Jessica Strange, prosecuting, said Lee Thorpe, 37, travelled across Yorkshire to target Go Outdoors stores in York and Doncaster.

 

He had an accomplice in a getaway car waiting when he went on a shoplifting expedition in the store on Foss Bank on January 17.

 

But his behaviour there was so shifty, several staff kept an eye on him as he moved about the store, and when he ducked into the attached warehouse.

 

There he waved the walking stick at them and threatened them before leaving with outdoor jackets worth £255 and jumping into the waiting car with his accomplice Michael Lee Battensby at the wheel.

 

Staff took the registration number as the pair escaped and police caught them at Bilbrough as they headed down the A64 towards their West Yorkshire homes.

 

Six days earlier, Thorpe had successfully stolen three coats worth £542 from Go Outdoors in Doncaster.

 

He was on prison licence at the time from a 12-month prison sentence for burglary.

 

"You are a career criminal," Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told him after reading his 80 convictions, many of them for burglary and theft.

 

A tear fell from Thorpe's eye as he was jailed for 28 months at York Crown Court.

 

Thorpe, of Edinburgh Terrace, Leeds, pleaded guilty to burglary, theft and having an offensive weapon in public.

 

Battensby, 31, of Troydale Lane, Pudsey, pleaded guilty to theft and was given a 12-month community order with 15 days' rehabilitative activities and a three-month curfew from 8pm to 7am.

 

For Thorpe, Julian Tanikal said he wanted to change his life so that he could spend more time with his children. He was caught in a spiral of offending, going to jail and then offending on his release.