A TEENAGE metal thief who stripped copper piping from a disused building in the dead of night has walked free from court.

Danny Norris, of St Mary’s Grove, Gorse Hill, was caught after a passing police officer was suspicious to see him lugging such a heavy bag.

And when he doubled back in his car, the officer discovered the 18-year-old and two friends were on their way home from plundering the scrap metal.

Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the crime was detected as a consequence of Insp Ian Stevenson’s ‘sharp eyes’.

She said he was on patrol in a police car at 2.45am on February 27 when he saw a man walking along Chapel Street.

“He was carrying a large bag which seemed heavy. He was suspicious and circled round to look at what he was doing,” she said.

The officer then came across three young men, and though the one he had seen earlier had changed his jacket, he recognised him from before.

“Not very far away from where the three males had been seen a black bag had been deposited,” she said. “That contained pieces of copper piping.”

Forensic links were later found between Norris and the bag and substances associated with cutting copper were also found on his shoes.

When he was questioned the teenager told police they had been to a disused former call centre, in Gipsy Lane. The building, which is owned by the National Grid, had been broken into in the past and the front door was boarded up.

Norris said the trio, armed with a drill and crowbar, broke through the wooden barrier and went into a kitchen area in the building.

“He said they decided to go in and get some copper piping – he said it is not being used so they might as well try and get some money out of it,” she said.

Once they started to get the piping he said he had nipped back home to get a larger bag to fill with the metal.

Norris pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary. The court heard the copper was worth £99 and £50.24 of damage was done.

Mike Pulsford, defending, said his client had never been in trouble with the police before and admitted what he had done when he was questioned.

His client had been in work as a kitchen hand at a national outlet for eight months, he said, so was not short of cash as he lives at home with his parents.

“He has a credit card with not much of a debt, no forms of addiction that he admits to. He really had no need to go out in the early hours of the morning to get essentially a really low financial gain from the enterprise,” he said.

Passing sentence, Judge Euan Ambrose said: “There is a legitimate public concern about the theft of metal. It can be at a nuisance level where it is inconvenient to the losers and frustrating to members of the public.

“It can be at a much more serious level where for example cabling is stolen from railways and though the cabling is of little scrap value but the loss to the railway of putting it right can be high and it can bring with it great public inconvenience and in some cases safety issues arise.

“These are the sort of cases that raise serious public concern: this is not that sort of case.”

He ordered Norris to do 250 hours of unpaid work, pay £149.24 compensation and £250 in costs.