Burglar caught after falling asleep in car he was trying to steal

A burglar was caught sleeping in a car outside the house he had broken into. Police picked up Alexander Sinclair, 30, after banging repeatedly on the window of the car parked outside the house he'd just burgled.

Officers had been called by the house and car's owner, who woke at 6am to find his front door ajar and his car keys missing. He had gone outside expecting the vehicle to have gone too, but instead he found Sinclair sleeping. Sinclair told police he had been on his way to the train station after a night out drinking in Cardiff and when it started to rain he just needed somewhere dry to rest.



He claimed he locked the car doors, on Rhymney Street, Cathays, Cardiff, in case the owner came out but intended posting the keys back in the morning. Cardiff Crown Court heard it wasn’t the first time that Alexander Sinclair had fallen asleep on the job. The court was told that in April last year, Devon and Cornwall police had to use bolt cutters to open the door of a hotel room where they found him fast asleep under a duvet.

Against doctors’ orders, the 30-year-old had been mixing alcohol with his depression medication, said defence counsel Byron Broadstock. Giving him a six-month suspended sentence for the Cardiff offence, Recorder Judge Eleri Rees said that going into someone’s home had a profound psychological effect on the victim. She ordered Sinclair, who admitted burglary, to undergo a alcohol treatment programme.