A prolific thief has been jailed after he fled from Mainsgill Farm Shop with a staff member clinging to the bonnet.
Alan Lewis, 58, was banned from driving at the time of the shocking incident at Mainsgill Farm in Richmond where staff recognised him from a shoplifting incident two weeks earlier when he bagged nearly £900 of goods, York Crown Court heard.
When he returned to the shop on November 23 last year, ostensibly for another shoplifting spree, staff members confronted him, at which point he ran out of the shop as they pursued him to his car.
Prosecutor Brooke Morrison said that one quick-thinking staff member ran to the car park exit in an attempt to close the gates before Lewis drove off.
“As Lewis pulled up to the exit of the car park, (the named staff member) managed to pull one side of the gates closed and blocked (the other side) with his body,” she added.
He shouted at Lewis to stop as the thief “shouted at him to get out of the way”. Lewis then drove the Vauxhall Corsa slowly towards him “to the point where (the staff member) was lifted onto the defendant’s bonnet”.
Lewis, who had a passenger in the car, then drove along the entire 200-metre-long driveway with the staff member’s “torso on the car bonnet, his legs and feet scraping the road”.
The victim was still clinging onto the bonnet as Lewis drove onto the A66 and stopped to check for oncoming traffic. This gave the victim the chance to jump off the car as Lewis drove off.
He wasn’t at large for too long, however, as CCTV had clocked his registration plate. He was duly arrested and brought in for questioning.
Lewis told officers he had given all the stolen items away and initially denied dangerous driving, laughably claiming that the staff member had “leapt up onto his car”.
Lewis, of Silvertree Walk, Goole, East Yorkshire, was charged with six offences including dangerous driving, shop theft and driving while disqualified and without insurance. He ultimately admitted all the charges and appeared for sentence today.
Ms Morrison said that Lewis had first driven to the farm shop on November 9 when he parked up outside the store in Moor Lane, East Layton, intent on a shoplifting splurge.
In four separate forays into and out of the shop between 1pm and 1.40pm, he stole “various goods” worth £897.50, put them in his trolley and loaded them into his vehicle, before driving away.
When he returned to the site two weeks later, staff recognised him from CCTV footage of the previous incident.
Ms Morrison said that Lewis’s shocking criminal record comprised 33 previous convictions for 89 offences including shoplifting, fraud, dangerous driving, careless driving and criminal damage.
His rap sheet, which dated back to the early 1980s, included a “remarkable” 25 previous drive-while-disqualified offences between 2004 and 2021. During that same period, he had been booked for driving without insurance a staggering 24 times.
His last conviction for dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and having no insurance led to a 58-week prison sentence and a three-and-a-half-year motoring ban.
Recorder Peter Makepeace KC said Lewis’s record for driving while disqualified alone was “as bad a record as I’ve ever seen in 35 years of doing this job”.
He added: “How you have not killed somebody is beyond me.”
“You clearly intend to continue driving, no matter how many times this court disqualifies you,” said Mr Makepeace.
He said that when Lewis returned to the farm shop on the second occasion, it was no doubt for another “plunder visit”.
He added: “I have no doubt that the people running the shop are incredibly hard-working entrepreneurs. They contribute massively to the community; everything they do is a force for good, and what you do is pillage them, you prey upon them.”
He said the named shop worker who tried to stop Lewis driving away had shown immense bravery which was “in stark contrast to you”.
He described CCTV footage of the incident as “chilling”, adding: “The slightest misfortune and he would have gone underneath your car and he would have been dead and you would have been prosecuted for homicide. Maybe you will learn a lesson (from this), but I doubt it very much.”
Mr Makepeace said he didn’t accept “for one minute” Lewis’s claim that he had given all the stolen items away.
He described Lewis’s criminal record as “shocking and appalling”.
Lewis received an 18-month jail sentence but was told he would only serve half of this behind bars before being released on prison licence. He was banned from driving for a further two years.
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