"Hang your head in shame" says Judge as Scarborough man jailed for burgling pensioner
A notorious Scarborough man was told “hang your head in shame” as a judge jailed him for burgling an elderly man’s home in the dead of night.
Lewis Bonson, 21, turned up at the pensioner’s home in Trinity Gardens, Scarborough, just before midnight “out of his mind” on Valium and booze, York Crown Court heard.
The 85-year-old victim, who has a heart condition, spinal problems and high blood pressure, heard a knock at his front door and when he answered he was met by a man “holding a can of beer” and looking clearly intoxicated”.
Bonson said he was looking for someone and then inched inside the house as the victim said he didn’t know anyone by that name.
The terrified victim, whose “heart was racing”, pushed Bonson out of the house and the burglar “did not resist”, said Mr Cahill.
But then the victim noticed a bunch of keys were missing, including the key to his Jaguar XL.
“(The victim) shouted at him to give the keys back,” added Mr Cahill.
“The male walked off down the steps of the neighbouring property.”
The victim called police who found Bonson a short distance away in Weaponness Valley Close.
Upon arrest, Bonson told officers he “only wanted some coke” and had “knocked on the door politely” but had got the wrong house.
During a search of the area, police found Bonson’s jacket which he had dumped in a nearby hedge.
A few days later, they found the victim’s keys on the roof of a property in Weaponness Valley Close.
Bonson initially denied the burglary but ultimately admitted the offence after the case reached court.
He appeared for sentence via video link today after being remanded in custody.
In a statement read out by the prosecution, the victim said it had been a “very traumatic experience” to find a young, clearly intoxicated man, on his doorstep late at night.
He said he couldn’t sleep in the days following the incident and felt “unsafe and very vulnerable” at the thought that “this man could come back”.
“It makes me feel stressed and anxious about going to the door to go outside,” he added.
Bonson’s “serious” record included battery, assaulting police, criminal damage, threatening behaviour and burglary.
In October 2018, he was locked up in a young offenders’ institution for the attempted robbery of an elderly woman after he and two other individuals snuck into her home and asked her “if she had any weed”.
Defence barrister Emily Hassell said that Bonson felt “very aggrieved” and was “having difficulty managing his emotions” on the night he burgled the elderly man’s home because the authorities had removed him from his mother’s home.
He had been living in a hotel in Prince of Wales Terrace where, before going to the victim’s home, he took “20 Valium tablets and drank strong lagers”.
According to Bonson himself, he was “out of my mind and didn’t have a clue what I was doing or where I was going”.
Judge Sean Morris slammed Bonson for burgling a “frail, 85-year-old man with a heart condition and spinal problems”.
“You caused him sleepless nights and he described his heart racing as he had to bundle you out of his house,” added Mr Morris.
“You should hang your head in shame.”
Bonson was jailed for two years and two months and made subject to a 10-year restraining order banning him from entering the cul-de-sac where the victim lives.