A BURGLAR is starting 18 months behind bars after eagle-eyed neighbours spotted him and an accomplice raiding a landlord’s flat.

Police dogs tracked down Mark Anthony Rutherford when he tried to escape from the raid at The Corner House pub in Burton Stone Lane, said Rob Galley, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

He and an accomplice took cash, electronic equipment and spirits from the landlord’s flat and the bar downstairs in the early hours of July 17.

But neighbours spotted two men behaving suspiciously in a nearby alleyway and called in police. Officers chased Rutherford, who initially escaped but was tracked by police dogs to a house in Cromer Street. He claimed he was “just doing a drug deal”.

It was the second time the neighbours had called out police. Fifteen minutes earlier they had spotted two men behaving oddly in the same alleyway, but when police arrived on that occasion the alleyway was empty.

Forensic scientists later matched Rutherford’s trainers to shoe-marks left on a roof outside the first-floor flat and officers found a crowbar in the alleyway but were unable to link it to Rutherford.

At the time of the raid, he was under a prison sentence suspended by York magistrates for another burglary.

Judge John Swanson said: “I am not prepared to extend the same leniency. You committed a very similar offence some four days after being made subject to a suspended sentence. That shows the court what your attitude to that sentence was.”

He jailed Rutherford, 39, of Byland Avenue, off Huntington Road, York, for 15 months, to be served after the three-month sentence, that was suspended on July 13.

Rutherford pleaded guilty to burglary on the basis that he acted as a look-out and did not enter the pub.

His barrister, Edward Renvoize, said being remanded in custody since his arrest had hit Rutherford hard emotionally because it meant he missed the birth of his grandchild. He had also lost responsibility for his son, who had learning difficulties.

He committed the burglary to get drugs and because of the people he was associating with, the court heard.