A man who broke into a student flat armed with a knife claiming he was the ‘IRA’ was today (Monday) jailed for six months.
Marc Samuel Spencer, 29, was told by a judge he would spend a further 18 months on supervised licence on his release in an effort to deal with his drug addiction issues.
Spencer, of Dismas House, Ormeau Road in South Belfast, had previously pleaded guilty to charges of burglary, criminal damage and possessing a knife in public.
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Prosecution lawyer Jim Johnston told Belfast Crown Court that around 8 pm on February 15, 2021, four students were at home at a flat in Wolseley Street in the Botanic area of South Belfast when one of them heard a male voice coming from his locked bedroom.
“The students opened the door and found the defendant in the room wearing the injured party’s baseball cap, a fleece top and a black fabric face mask,” the lawyer said.
“The defendant said: ‘I am with the IRA. Don’t do anything stupid or you will be got. Just let me leave’.”
Mr Johnston told Judge Mark Reel that Spencer was allowed out into the hallway where the injured party tried to pull his fleece top off the intruder.
“This revealed a knife in the rear waistband of the defendant’s trousers and they backed off from him. At one point the defendant had the knife in his hand and holding it low,” the court heard.
The students ushered Spencer out of the flat and he dropped the knife outside. Items stolen during the burglary included a baseball cap, a North Face fleece, car keys, a wallet, jewellery and headphones.
Mr Johnston said the students waved down a passing police car. Officers pulled alongside Spencer who threw a WKD bottle at the car, chipping the armoured glass on a rear passenger window.
The prosecutor added: “The defendant then jumped a fence onto a railway line before climbing scaffolding at a building in The Gasworks. For several hours he remained up on the roof of the building, throwing down items at police below. One of these items was a set of stolen car keys. Eventually he gave himself up to police.”
The court heard that Spencer had only been released on licence just a few weeks earlier and was returned to prison. The judge was told that the defendant had 61 convictions on his criminal record, which included ten offences of burglary which were all committed since 2013.
Judge Reel said there was no evidence that Spencer used the knife in an “aggressive fashion” but it had “caused obvious fear to the occupants”.
The knife was examined and it did not belong to the students which the judge said meant Spencer had brought the knife with him to the burglary.
Handing down a longer period on supervised licence with the Probation Board, Judge Reel said an “intensive intervention is needed if there is to be any prospect of rehabilitating this defendant”.
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