Bricklaying burglar who broke into shop through wall was later paid by owner to rebuild it

An unemployed bricklayer broke into a shop by removing part of a side wall – then offered his services to repair the damage the next day. Michael Patterson, 43, carried out a spate of burglaries by taking bricks out of store walls before crawling through the hole. He targeted one shop, Nina Store on Stockport Road, Levenshulme, four times. After the first robbery, in which he took cash and a laptop, he returned the next day and offered to fix the hole.



Store owner Ezekiel Sagary, 71, paid him £35 to carry out the work, not realising he was the burglar. Patterson, of Hyde Road, Gorton, then entered the shop through the same patched-up hole a further three times, taking more cash and computers. On one occasion he even an electricity meter. Patterson was eventually tracked down by police and brought before Manchester Crown Court. He was jailed for 32 months after pleading guilty to six counts of burglary, carried out in July and August last year.

He will be subject to an exclusion order, banning him from the Stockport Road area between 6pm-8am, on his release. Mr Sagary told how the repeated break-ins had left him scared to open his store. He said: “Every morning I felt terrified in case there was someone there waiting for me in the shop. What makes it worse is that after the first time I paid him to fix the wall.



“He obviously did a bad patch-up job on purpose so he could come back again and again. He offered to fix the wall again after the second time and when I said I couldn’t afford it he lost his temper and warned me the shop would be burgled again. When I was coming in in the morning I would try the door handle and when it didn’t push down I knew it had happened again. I was living in constant fear for both my safety and my livelihood.”