Gang used stolen van as battering ram in £10k raid
A member of a smash-and-grab gang who escaped with £10,000 in cash during a burglary at a home has been jailed for more than three years.
Mohammed Waseem and three other people used a stolen van as a battering ram to force open the garage door of the property during the early hours of the morning, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.
Neighbours heard the crash but the occupant of the three-storey maisonette in Seymour Road, Smethwick, was on medication and slept through the break-in.
The burglars walked through the garage into the kitchen where they found a £350 laptop in a rucksack and the briefcase that held the money.
The cash was going to be used to buy a car by the occupant who was finally roused by people living nearby who had taken the registration number of the van in which the gang fled at around 3am on June 4 last year said Mr Richard Franck, prosecuting.
Later it was spotted by police three miles away on a Dudley Port filling station forecourt where officers waited until 30-year-old Waseem came out of the kiosk and drove away.
A patrol car and dog van tailed the it for more than a mile when the defendant suddenly braked in Anderson Road, Tipton, and made a run for it.
He was caught after a short foot chase but continued to struggle until bitten on the leg by the police dog, continued Mr Franck, who concluded: “Those involved must have known there was a large amount of money at the property and targeted it.”
Usage of Waseem’s mobile phone revealed he had been at the scene when the silver Ford Transit van – on the same false plates after being stolen on February 10, 2016 – was used by two men in a failed bid to steal the Engine Control Unit from a BMW 3 on May 15 last year.
The crooks broke a window to get into the the car that was parked outside the home of its owner who was alerted by the noise and chased them away empty handed.
Mr Sunit Sandhu, defending the divorced father of one who works for the family poultry business, said: “His life started to fall apart and he ended up with the wrong crowd but is now back on the straight and narrow.”
Waseem, from Keyworth Close, Tipton, admitted driving a vehicle taken without consent, attempted theft and burglary and was sent to prison for three years and three months by Recorder Dean Kershaw who told him: “The van was used as a weapon to break into the maisonette in a burglary that had clearly been planned.”
