A homeless thief has been jailed for 14 months for stealing jewellery from the parents who gave him a roof over his head.

Barbara Foster put her £300 charms bracelet in a bedroom safe for security while she went into hospital for a major operation, said prosecutor Jane Chadwick.

But when she and her husband, Peter, noticed after her return home that her son, Mark Ian Towers, had more money than the benefits he was claiming, they checked their safe and found it empty.

In addition to the bracelet, which had high sentimental value, he had also taken three bracelets worth £300 belonging to his stepfather.

York magistrates jailed him for 300 days, plus 126 days unserved from a previous sentence. He had been on parole at the time.

His solicitor, Mark Thompson, said: "He was the author of his misfortune again. Having been given one more chance by his parents, he messed it up completely."

Towers, 31, no fixed address, pleaded guilty to two charges of stealing jewellery, two charges of stealing Dyson vacuum cleaners from Argos's Monks Cross store with an accomplice on Christmas Eve, careless driving, driving without insurance and possessing eight wraps of heroin. He also admitted breaching a community order. Mrs Chadwick said Towers's mother and stepfather were reluctant to let him stay at their home, but did so. He sold the bracelets at Moneyspinners, giving his own name and using his NHS card as ID. After his arrest, he denied the jewellery charges and the case was due to go to trial. But as witnesses waited in a side room to give evidence against him, he changed his plea to guilty.

The Argos thefts were captured on CCTV and police were waiting for him as he left the store in a Laguna with the stolen hoovers. But he ignored their order to stop and drove onto the grass verge of Jockey Lane to escape. Police later found the vacuum cleaners at an accomplice's home.

Towers had eight wraps of heroin on him when police stopped him on the street on June 27 and arrested him. He said they were for his own use.

Mr Thompson said Towers had a long-standing heroin addiction and had been jailed for five years in 2002. He was released on October 6, 2005, and for a time had gone straight.

But then his relationship with a long-term girlfriend broke down, he slipped back into heroin taking and he had nowhere to live. So he pleaded with his parents to let him stay with them.

Following the discovery of the jewellery thefts, they showed him the door and he was again living on the streets, or at a homeless shelter or with friends.