Coventry burglar staked out people's homes as he delivered gutter cleaning leaflets, court told

A burglar who used his distribution of leaflets for a gutter-clearing business to target houses to break into was caught after a police officer took his registration number.

And following his arrest Dwain Matthews pleaded guilty at the crown court in Leamington to burgling houses in Kenilworth, Cubbington and Marton.

Matthews, 30, of Tarquin Close, Willenhall, Coventry, who had escaped with thousands of pounds worth of property, was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Prosecutor Lal Amarasinghe said that in June there were a series of burglaries in rural areas of Warwickshire.

Each time the offenders canvassed the area with leaflets offering a guttering clearing service to identify houses where there was no-one at home.

They would then break in and carry out untidy searches before escaping with jewellery and other property worth thousands of pounds.

In June a Kenilworth family went on holiday, and when they returned they found their home in Mountbatten Avenue had been broken into and jewellery, an i-Pad and an i-Pod had been stolen.

On June 10 the familys neighbours had seen a man in the road handing out leaflets.

And a police officer who was unaware of the burglary at the time, but thought he was acting suspiciously, wrote down the registration number of his vehicle - which was registered to Matthews.

The following day a house in Birdingbury Road, Marton, was broken into and a quantity of jewellery stolen from a womans bedroom, including wedding and engagement rings. The woman, who described her bedroom as having been ransacked, was deeply upset by what had happened and by the loss of the rings, said Mr Amarasinghe.

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Coventry burglar staked out people's homes as he delivered gutter cleaning leaflets, court told