A BURGLAR who broke into an elderly couple’s home at dead of night and made off with cash, jewellery, and bank cards has been jailed for four years.
Mark Ruff, 38, even stole a bus pass from his vulnerable victims, a 93-year-old man and his wife, aged 88, when he raided their house in Ingleton in March 2014.
The couple, who had lived at the address for 33 years, never felt secure and at home there again, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.
Ruff, a drug addict who scratched a living scavenging in dustbins, was with an accomplice when he entered the occupied house through an insecure door, prosecutor Abigail Langford said.
The two men went on to break into a car the same night, making off with a SatNav and a coat.
They were stopped by the police in Blackpool and stolen items from the burglary were recovered.
Miss Langford told the court that the elderly couple, who were both disabled, had now both died.
“Their independence and confidence was significantly reduced afterwards and they felt vulnerable in the house where they had lived together for 33 years. It no longer felt like home,” she said.
Ruff, of Egerton Road, Blackpool, was on bail when he was caught scavenging in bins in a garden in his home town in February last year.
He told the police he was a “picker” doing home clearances and went on to admit a vagrancy charge of being found on enclosed premises and an offence of going equipped with a “burglar’s kit.”
He was again seen by the police rummaging in bins last July, with amphetamine in his pocket.
Ruff was brought to court in custody, having been arrested on a Bench Warrant after failing to turn up at Bradford Crown Court in December last year.
He pleaded guilty to the burglary and to possession of amphetamine.
The court heard Ruff had previous convictions for theft of vehicles and commercial burglary.
In July 2014, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, suspended for two years, for breaking into a building at Blackpool Airport and stealing numerous items of computer equipment.
Ruff’s barrister, Nigel Jamieson, said: “There can be no argument that immediate custody will be imposed.”
Ruff was a homeless drug addict at the time he burgled the couple’s home.
“He took solace in amphetamine after the break-up of two relationships,” Mr Jamieson said.
Ruff ended up by chance in Ingleton, the court heard, after he and his accomplice ran out of petrol late at night on a trip back to Blackpool to visit a relative in Leeds.
He did not deliberately target the home of elderly people but Mr Jamieson accepted that was a chance that housebreakers took when they picked properties to raid.
Judge Peter Benson said the couple, who between them suffered with deafness and blindness, felt “unsettled and vulnerable” in their home following the burglary, after living there “untroubled for 33 years.”
Ruff was locked up for 30 months for the house burglary and given consecutive sentences for the other charges, totalling four years.