A robber has been jailed for three years after he tried to hold up a shop armed with a cardboard toilet roll tube. Paul McDonald, 48, who was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court this week, stormed the shop and demanded money, while holding what looked like a gun under his jumper.
The frightened teenage cashier, believing that McDonald was gripping a deadly firearm, immediately handed over a small amount of cash to him. McDonald then fled the shop, on Wollaton Street, Nottingham city centre, but the same cashier then gave chase and heroically tackled him to the ground.
And it was only then that McDonald’s lethal weapon was in fact revealed an empty cardboard loo roll. McDonald dropped the cash and ran away again but the police caught him a few minutes later.
The crook, from Derby, admitted robbery and having an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence, following the hold-up on April 14 this year, and was given three years in prison.
Detective Constable Rob Marsden, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: “McDonald’s decision that day to storm into the store and threaten someone with what they believed was a gun was completely unacceptable and reckless in the extreme. At the time of the robbery, the shop worker had no way of knowing for sure that the object being pointed at him was anything other than a real firearm.
“This must have been a terrifying experience for the teenage victim, who will have believed they were in danger of being seriously hurt throughout the ordeal.
“While McDonald wasn’t carrying a weapon during this incident, this was still an incredibly serious offence, so I’m pleased to see this has been reflected in the length of the sentence handed out to him.”
