A car-obsessed burglar who stole a Ford hatchback so he could get home has been jailed.

Callum Gomm, 23, was said by his barrister to have been looking for a push bike when he was out burgling last November.

He found the back door of a house in Bailey Road, Cowley, unlocked and swiped the keys to a 15-year-old Ford Focus and an £850 Apple laptop as the householder lay asleep upstairs.

Peter du Feu, mitigating, said the car had been worth relatively little but it was a chance for his client to drive and a way for him to get home.

“He’s absolutely obsessed with cars. It’s almost, he would say, to the point of a mental illness. It’s not stealing cars to order in some kind of professional way. It’s stealing cars because he absolutely loves to drive,” the barrister said.

Mr du Feu added that if his client was able to address his obsession with vehicles he’d be able to ‘get back on track’. He had completed courses while in prison and was determined to change his ways.

Jailing him the ‘third strike’ burglar for two years and five months, Recorder John Ryder QC urged him to stop wasting his life.

“I’m just reviewing your criminal history and it makes extraordinarily depressing reading, I’m afraid,” he said.

“You’re only 23 – extraordinary young – and...you have amassed 13 pages of previous convictions.

“The cost to you has been repeated appearances before the court. Various initiatives have been undertaken by the courts in the form of community orders, typically with supervisory or rehabilitative components which have been intended to encourage you to live lawfully and not commit crime.

“But they’ve all failed with the result that certainly it seems since 2018 you have spent a great deal of time in custody.

“I’m afraid unless you change you will spend the greater part of your life in custody.

“It is a dreadful waste because I read earlier the various documents submitted on your behalf by Mr du Feu and they’re very impressive.”

It was plain Gomm was intelligent and highly perceptive, Recorder Ryder said. “You have more than sufficient intelligence and personality to live a successful life. It would be better for you and better for everybody else.”

Prosecutor Steven Molloy told Oxford Crown Court that one of the occupants of the Bailey Road home had got back at around 5.30am to find the Ford Focus was missing from the driveway. His partner, who had been asleep upstairs, discovered her Apple laptop was gone.

Software installed on the computer led police to Windrush Tower, Blackbird Leys. They found the Ford parked up outside the tower block.

Gomm, of Knights Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty to burglary and theft of the car. The court heard he had 17 convictions for 43 offences. He was convicted of his first burglary in 2013, when he was still a youth. Most recently, he was jailed for 16 months in February for attempted house break-ins and a non-dwelling burglary.

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