A serial burglar's break-in "spree" was ended when he was seen by the occupier of the latest property he targeted driving away in the family car, which he had loaded-up with valuables.
Paul Freeman, 30, of Rectory Green, Beckenham scoped the Eltham residential neighbourhood on a bike and broke in at 8.05 am, waking-up a man who was sleeping upstairs.
He immediately called the police, who stopped Freeman in the vehicle four hours later and arrested him.
While in police custody Freeman confessed to twenty similar domestic burglaries, which he asked Woolwich Crown Court to take into consideration when sentencing him.
He pleaded guilty to burgling the Eltham home on October 9, stealing a computer, a ring and the car keys and taking and driving away the vehicle and was sentenced to four years and four months imprisonment.
Freeman has been locked-up for six-and-a-half of the last eleven years and had just been released from prison when he started burgling homes again.
He received four months for burglary at Guildford Crown Court in October, 2006; twenty-nine months at Canterbury Crown Court in 2010 and three years at Basildon Crown Court in March, last year.
The court heard Freeman found himself homeless and burgled to fund his cocaine and crack habit.
He told police when quizzed about his crime wave: "It was a cry for help. I feel terrible."
Judge Anuja Dhir QC said: "He was certainly on a spree during August, September and October."
She told Freeman, whose lawyer asked for the court to place him on probation: "You are a prolific burglar with a long history of offending.
"It wasn't long after your release that you started this particular spree of burglaries.
"You are going into another person's home, taking their personal property, which may have sentimental value and the vast majority of these burglaries involved the taking of jewellery, which almost always has sentimental value and cannot be replaced."
Scum.
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