A shoplifter threatened a security guard with a syringe at a store in Huddersfield.
Christopher Day was already on bail for stealing meat from a Sainsbury’s store in the town on November 30 last year when he was spotted taking a box cutter in Poundland on December 5.
Graham O’Sullivan prosecuting told Leeds Crown Court the security guard Gavin Sykes followed Day out when he did not pay and caught up to him near a local bus station.
Day began to walk back with him to the store but then dropped the cutter on the ground and when Mr Sykes bent over to pick it up Day took the syringe out of his pocket and began to threaten him with it.
There was then a struggle as the security guard tried to detain him without being stabbed with the syringe which Day said later had a cap on it.
He was arrested and was taken to the police station having “tried to conceal the syringe in a rather disgusting way by putting it up his bottom.”
Mr O’Sullivan said Mr Sykes had to undergo tests at hospital fearful he might have been caught by the syringe although fortunately it turned out he had not.
Day was later bailed and was spotting shoplifting in Slaithwaite on June 26 this year when he was found with £205 of washing liquid.
Christopher Smith, representing him, told the court: “If society wanted a poster boy for the train wreck that drugs can make of your life then he is here in the back of this court.
“His antecedent history is terrible, littered with acquisitive crime designed as the court knows to get a little bit of money so he can inject or take some other controlled substance.”
Day, 30 of Balmoral Avenue, Crosland Moor, admitted common assault on Mr Sykes and three offences of theft.
Jailing him for 16 months, Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said: “It does not need me to tell you that you have a dreadful, dreadful criminal record and it is because of your addiction to drugs.”
