A BURGLAR has been jailed after she crept into a house and stole a rucksack containing £900 from a bedroom where a young child was.

Gemma Myeah left the young mother terrified when she realised a burglar had been rummaging around her home while she was bringing shopping into the terraced house.

The 35-year-old was described as a drug addict and habitual offender when she was sentenced at Teesside Crown Court.

Judge Jonathan Carroll jailed Myeah for 876 days – more than 28 months – after she pleaded guilty to burglary but refused to name her accomplice.

He said: “You were out that with another person, you know who that person was and you were out together, it is clear that you were under the influence of substances and alcohol, you had addictions you needed to feed.

“Whilst I can’t say that you were positively out on a burglary escapade, you were very much alive to whatever opportunities presented themselves.”

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The judge added: “You entered the bedroom, took the rucksack containing the cash and various other property and you fled.

“When she came back to the bedroom she rapidly identified the bag had gone and she questioned the child and knew she hadn’t got it, so she knew that somebody had been in her house and stolen it.

“It’s hard to imagine the sense of invasion she must have felt, not just that somebody had invaded her home but that that they had been in the same room as her child – she must have been sick with fear.

“She fled the house in case you were still there and that is a fair indication of how frightened she must have been.”

The Northern Echo: Gemma MyeahGemma Myeah

Uzma Khan, prosecuting, said the defendant was caught when someone turned up at her door and offered to tell her where the stolen rucksack was if she handed over £15.

The court heard how the woman was followed back to an address in Middlesbrough where Myeah was arrested an hour after the burglary on June 13.

Lewis Kerr, in mitigation, said his client was responding well to drug treatment after she was remanded in custody which had ‘saved her life’.

He added: “She was using a huge mixture of drink and drugs of all different kinds, both illicit and prescribed medication. She found herself remanded into custody, something she describes as the best thing that ever happened to her.

“Had she not, she feels she could be dead.”

Myeah, of Dorothy Street, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary.

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