By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 14:57, Friday, 30 November 2012

A 24-year-old burglar who has spent every Christmas in prison since he was 12 has been locked up again.

Dean Kerr, of no fixed address: Admitted burglary, stealing a car and driving while disqualified and was jailed for two years. The court heard he had 95 previous convictions.

When Dean Michael Kerr drove away in his victim’s car he was so high on drugs that he was found almost unconscious in it eight hours later, a court heard.

Kerr, who had 95 previous convictions, took the black Ford Focus from the drive after burgling the house in Heron Drive, off Warwick Road in Carlisle, late on the night of August 13 while Robert Bone, his partner Marie Irwin and his five-year-old son were asleep upstairs.

He drove Ms Irwin’s car to Kingstown where at about 4.15am the nightshift manager at the Asda store found him sitting asleep in one of the aisles, clearly under the influence of drink or drugs.

Staff got him to his feet and, after paying for a bag of sweets, he left. But, the city’s crown court was told, the manager was so worried when he saw him climb into the car in such a drugged-up state he called the police.

A little later a tenant of a flat in Chatsworth Square saw him parked in her private parking space. When he was still there four hours later she told her landlord, who called the police.

Kerr was found asleep again – with the laptop and X-Box he had taken in the burglary beside him in the car.

“He was almost unconscious – patently under the influence of drugs,” prosecutor Dick Binstead said

Kerr, who has no fixed address, pleaded guilty to burglary, stealing the car and driving while disqualified.

In mitigation his barrister Kim Whittlestone said Kerr had recently been trying without success to put his “very troubled” background behind him by moving to the north-east.

“Both he and I concede that there comes a time when he has to take responsibility for his own actions,” she said.

He had been locked up over every Christmas since he was 12. During his last sentence his mother and brother died – something which had affected him greatly, she said.

Kerr was jailed for two years.

First published at 14:51, Friday, 30 November 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk