TWO career criminals will today learn their sentences after a jury convicted them of robbing their community’s convenience store at knifepoint.

The actions of Shaun Holding, also known as Chapman, 34, and Ben Lee Simpson, 31, so traumatised staff at The Spar shop, Clifton, that one employee left her job, said Andrew Semple, prosecuting at York Crown Court, after the verdicts were returned.

Its manager for nearly 30 years is now apprehensive when people come into the store, especially at night.

The jury heard how the pair, disguised with scarves and tights taken from one of their girlfriends, held a knife to the manager’s face, and “frog marched” a woman employee to the tills at 10.30pm on February 20, 2016.

“Each of them are career criminals,” the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC, told the jury after the verdicts. “There will be very lengthy sentences imposed tomorrow.”

Women close to the defendants wept in the public gallery as the two guilty verdicts were delivered.

“It is a pity those tears were not shed for the victims of the crime,” the judge said.

Holding, of Burrill Avenue, Clifton at the time of the robbery, and Simpson, then living at the Arc Light Centre, Union Street, but who has lived for most of his life in Clifton, both denied robbery but were convicted unanimously.

Mr Semple said since the robbery, the store’s management has paid for every member of staff to have their own panic button.

The pair stole £350 in cash from the till when they were foiled in their bid to get staff to open the shop’s safe.

They also took cigarettes worth £1,000 and scratch cards.

Both were remanded in custody and will be sentenced today (Thursday, February 15).