Homeless man smeared his excrement around library after accidentally getting locked in

A homeless man who smeared poo around Margate library while he was locked in overnight has admitted causing criminal damage. Thanet Magistrates Court heard how David Wilkes, 34, of no fixed abode, found himself trapped at the Cecil Street building after it closed at 6pm on July 2.

Wilkes, who had been drinking, was then caught short after discovering the toilets were shut. Prosecuting, Jody Tyman told the court how Wilkes urinated on a chair and defecated on the floor, accidentally rubbing it into the carpet and tramping it into the area used by children. The library manager was confronted with the disgusting daubs after the cleaners released Wilkes at 8am the next morning.



Mrs Tyman said the mess meant a section of the library had to be closed for a large part of the day and specialist cleaners had to be called in. The damage cost £800 to clear up. Wilkes was found drunk on a bench the next day and arrested by police. The library's CCTV cameras captured him soiling the carpet. Defending, Paul Goldspring of Kent Defence described the case as "unusual" and asked magistrates to consider Wilkes's difficult circumstances.

He said: "There are two ways to view what Mr Wilkes did: There is sympathetic, charitable way and there is the sensationalist way that no doubt the newspapers will take when reporting it – that it was somehow a disgusting, deliberate act. Clearly it wasn't." Mr Goldspring said Wilkes had been desperate to go to the toilet and made a decision he wished he had not. Magistrates ordered Wilkes to return to the Margate court on Friday (October 5), when he will be sentenced.