A ROBBER who wore a mask from the movie Scream as he held up a Co-op store with a “revolver-style” gun made off with £9,000, a judge was told.

Aaron Flemon, who has 89 previous offences to his name, burst into the store in the horror-film disguise at 9.55pm and ordered the manager to open the safe.

The 31-year-old, of Rippington Drive, Marston, Oxford, held the imitation “silver revolver-style gun” at two staff members and two other people at the Co-op in Bloxham on August 8 last year.

After store manager Lance Hitchcox opened the safe at gunpoint, Flemon made off with £9,283 in cash and bought a car for £1,200 the following day.

Police recovered some of his clothes, obtaining a trace of his DNA, a judge at Oxford Crown Court was told.

On September 1, he was found with £2,098 in cash taken from a robbery at the Co-op in King’s Sutton, near Banbury, the previous day.

He admitted handling stolen goods in relation to that offence and robbery, and having an imitation firearm with intent in connection with the Bloxham incident.

Judge Anthony King jailed Flemon for a total of nine years.

Flemon was jailed for six years in 2002 for a robbery in which he and three other men attacked a security guard at Lye Hill Quarry car compound at Forest Hill, and stole four cars, the judge heard.

Joanna Durber, prosecuting, said the cash and gun have not been recovered. She said Flemon told police he had hidden the imitation weapon with the aim of retrieving it upon his release from prison, but later told officers he had thrown it in bushes near the river behind his house.

Franco Tizzano, defending, said three of the four people in the shop thought the gun might not be real, indicating it was not a particularly realistic imitation.

He said his client had been an exemplary prisoner in his time on remand and had completed courses including an AS-Level in psychology.

Judge King said Flemon had worn a “mask of a particu-larly horrible kind” in a move “calculated to cause fear”.

He added: “It’s perfectly obvious that these were grave offences. It was clearly a planned robbery targeted at a small business late at night.”

He went on: “A sentence of six years does not appear to have taught you the lesson that you must not commit this type of offence.”

A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing to recover some of the stolen money will be held in September.