A prolific thief has been jailed after he threw hot coffee over a detention officer following his arrest for a recent spate of supermarket thefts.

David Mundy, 35, was once again before Swindon Magistrates' Court appearing via video link from prison on Wednesday, July 31.

The shoplifter had just completed a six-month prison sentence for which he was released early when he committed a number of thefts from various supermarket chains in July and was subsequently arrested again. 

Chicken, steak, beer and washing-up liquid were among items stolen during eight incidents that took place at a Co-op, Morrisons and Tesco between Monday, July 8 and Friday, July 12 amounting to £536.90, all of which were caught on CCTV. 

While in custody on Saturday, July 13 the defendant grew frustrated over not being able to have a shower and after being brought food and drink, doused a detention worker with hot coffee - although no injury was caused. 

Mundy pleaded guilty to these charges.

The prosecution brought up that four of the offences had taken place in a Co-op despite Mundy being banned from all Co-ops via a previous order.

His past convictions were also mentioned, which included three prior assaults of an emergency worker in May, and 224 previous offences for theft. 

Mr Motson represented Mundy as his defence counsel.

He said: "Mr Munday is no stranger to this court, he has a large number of offences on his record, and he wants the opportunity to do some in-depth work with probation, to try and break this hitherto unbreakable cycle of offending.

"He wants to break the cycle, custodial sentences do not break this cycle, he needs the in-depth work of the probation office, to stand any chance of something finally clicking and this cycle of offending and custody being broken once and for all."

The probation service did lay out a possible community order option for Mundy but added that there had been very little completion of previous ones. 

Magistrates disagreed however and said: "We’ve listened to everything that’s been said, we’ve looked at your prolific record, we’ve heard how you’d like to complete a community order, but we’re not convinced.

"For the thefts we have decided on a sentence of 19 weeks for each theft, running concurrently. 

"And for the assault, we have decided on two weeks in custody, which is a total of 21 weeks. 

The court did not impose any fines or costs.