A thief who was linked to a robbery at a shop in Dudley by his Minnie Mouse gloves, severe limp and distinctive tattoo has been jailed for six years at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Shane Hadlington was wearing a motorcycle helmet when he walked into the One Stop Shop on Bourne Street, Roseville on 15 August last year.
The 27-year-old was with another man, who has never been identified, when they threatened staff with a metal bar and stole £3,700 worth of spirits and cigarettes.
When detectives reviewed CCTV footage they noticed one of the masked robbers walked with a distinctive limp, had a tattoo of the word ‘DAD’ on his right wrist and was wearing a pair of Minnie Mouse gloves.
It emerged that just four days prior to the robbery a police officer had seen Hadlington in a wheelchair and he told them he had fallen off his motorbike.
Subsequent enquiries on Facebook showed he also had a ‘DAD’ tattoo on his wrist, identical to that of the offender from the One Stop Shop.
When Hadlington became a named suspect in August 2015 detectives raided his last known address in the Lower Gornal area of Dudley but he wasn’t there.
During a search they found the incriminating Minnie Mouse gloves, a two tone duvet similar to that used as a swag bag in the robbery and tracksuit bottoms identical to those worn by one of the offenders.
When the search for Hadlington went cold, his photograph was published on the West Midlands Police website as ‘wanted’ and circulated across social media.
In October 2015 he was finally arrested at a café in Kingswinford after being spotted by a Police Community Support Officer who was on routine patrol.
He was later charged with robbery.
He denied the offence but at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday (8 April) was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to six years in prison.
Sergeant Sean Corrigan, from Dudley Police, said: “This was a terrifying robbery for the staff involved and I’m glad we were able to track down one of the main offenders and secure this lengthy jail term at court.
“After starting with just the limp, we soon racked up a whole package of overwhelming evidence against Hadlington including the tattoo, the duvet and the tracksuit bottoms, with Minnie Mouse being his ultimate downfall.
“By that point we’d pretty much built the whole case and then it was simply a matter of trying to find him. Thanks to an observant PCSO on the ground it didn’t take very long and we’ve now been able to take a dangerous offender off the streets.”
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