A crack-smoking supermarket shoplifter who stole a charity box for sick Worcester schoolboy Oscar Saxelby-Lee has admitted stealing televisions to order.

Lewis Ilsley was spared jail despite admitting a string of theft offences at various supermarkets in the city including Tesco in Millwood Drive and the Co-op in Lichfield Avenue when he appeared before magistrates in Worcester on Thursday.

Laying out the sad background to his life, he told a probation officer his mother left when he was 11 years old, he had taken crack cocaine since he was 13 and suffered PTSD due to having an abusive father.

"Drugs became my parents," he said.

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In total the 43-year-old of Coppice Close, Hallow, near Worcester admitted 11 thefts including at Sainsbury's in Windermere Drive, a Tesco Express in London Road and Spar in August and September this year.

The items he stole included meat, cheese, gin, bottles of vodka, washing detergent and four televisions. The televisions, worth £800 in total, were all stolen from Tesco - two on September 23 this year and two more just two days later. He was said to be acting as part of a group when the thefts happened which was considered an aggravating feature of the case.

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Two yeas ago we reported how Ilsley was convicted of theft, having admitted to stealing a collection tin containing £300 for Oscar Saxelby-Lee. The box was part of a fund-raising campaign to pay for cancer treatment overseas.

Ralph Robyns-Landricombe, prosecuting, described how Ilsley took the TVs, walking out without paying. The defendant was identified via the store's CCTV.

"He says the majority of the offences and the stock stolen was pre-ordered and the defendant stated, due to Covid, he had lost his support structure, causing him to fall back into drug use. He was stealing goods to order" said the prosecutor.

The court was told the defendant had 41 previous convictions largely for offences of shop theft. His last offences before the court were handling stolen goods and shoplifting.

A probation officer interviewed Isley before he was sentenced, delivering a verbal report. She described him as 'quite open in interview'.

"He said all the offences were to fund his drug use, crack cocaine being the drug of choice that he takes. He tells me he has had a health scare. He found out he had a blood clot on his lung" she said.

Gary Harper, defending, said Isley, who now has stable accommodation, was motivated to become a good and useful citizen once more.

Magistrates made a 12 month community order to include 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days and a nine month drug rehabilitation requirement.

He was also fined £70. Because of this outstanding debts with the court (£1,940), the bench did not feel it reasonable to add the full amount of compensation to all the supermarkets for the goods stolen although they did order him to pay £30 to the Spar shop 'that being a smaller shop than some of the others'.

No order was imposed for costs. No statutory victim surcharge was levied.