A serial burglar has accidentally locked himself in a government department bike cage and fallen into police hands after following a woman into the Commonwealth premises with bolt cutters.
That was just one of the ways Mitchell Ryan Steep was apprehended during a year-long crime spree that led to him being handed a five-year jail sentence.
Last month, when Steep was 31 years old, Justice David Mossop also imposed a two-year-and-eight-month non-parole period.
ACT Supreme Court sentencing remarks published on Thursday reveal Steep followed the woman in June 2023 into a locked bike cage at the Department of Health and Aged Care in Woden.
The cage was only accessible with a swipe pass issued to members of the federal department and most of the bikes inside were locked onto metal racks.
But when Steep walked into the secure access area and the woman eventually left, he became locked inside.
CCTV captured the man putting a pair of black bolt cutters he had brought with him under a milk crate in the corner.
Police arrived less than 20 minutes later.
Steep was sentenced after admitting a string of charges, including four counts of burglary, four counts of theft and a single count of trespassing on Commonwealth property.
Across 2023, the man took items, some worth thousands of dollars, from ACT businesses and homes.
That included tools worth over $6000 and more than $1100 in cash from a Mister Minit stall inside the South Point Shopping Centre in Greenway in January of that year.
The following month, Steep snagged an e-bike worth $10,000 chained up outside Belconnen Westfield.
In July, the serial thief filled a bag with cosmetic products worth $7000 and dashed when a Westfield Woden David Jones manager spotted him and police arrived.
But Steep's most valuable crime took place in August 2023, when he took $12,000 worth of tools from an open garage in Coombs in the middle of the night.
Sentencing the man, Justice Mossop said Steep appeared to have recognised his difficulty with drugs and was motivated to address the issue.
"The offending reflects a common pattern of property crime designed to obtain goods to raise money to purchase drugs," the judge said.
Steep attributed his offending to substance misuse and had asked the court for a rehabilitation-focused drug and alcohol treatment order to be served in the community.
He was found ineligible due to the length of his sentence.
Justice Mossop did not make reparation orders that had been sought for some of the man's victims given they would not be complied with due to his "limited means".
"The inability to obtain reparations may well be disappointing to the victims of the theft offences but it is a consequence of a combination of the factors to which I have referred," the judge said.
"It means that, unfortunately, the burden of the offending is borne by them."
Factoring time already spent in custody, Steep will be eligible for parole in August 2026.
