A hapless laptop thief has been jailed after he was caught on CCTV while feeding fish at the scene of the crime.
Stephen Bryne walked into the offices of Cross Refrigeration in Dublin, Ireland and snatched the director's laptop computer, valued at £1800.
However, in what the prosecution described as an "unintelligent crime", he then stopped to feed the office fish on the way out, while at the same time turning to smile at the CCTV camera.
Bryne (37) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the theft of the Toshiba laptop at Cross Refrigeration Ltd at Cookstown Industrial Estate on August 17, 2010.
His defence pointed to his long history of drug addiction and the fact that he suffers from schizophrenia as reasons behind the crime and his bizarre actions, but Judge Martin Nolan noted that the theft was one of many burglaries that Bryne had committed that had led to 63 previous convictions and sentenced him to three years in prison with the final 21 months suspended.
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