Two burglars who plundered an outhouse of metal in broad daylight were caught out by CCTV.
Kai Wilkinson, 19, and Ryan Bell, 26, hopped onto their van’s roof to gain access over a wall and into a yard in Talbot Road, South Shields.
Bell opened the shed and passed £500 of metal to Wilkinson, who perched himself on a wall and threw it into their vehicle.
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Their burglary was uncovered when the homeowner returned at 3pm on Friday, January 24 last year and checked her security system, a court heard.
The high-quality footage showed Wilkinson, of Tower Court, Easington Lane, and Bell, of Leyburn Grove, Houghton-le-Spring, committing their crime.
Prosecutor Glenda Beck said Bell was also caught driving while banned and without insurance on Thursday, October 8.
She revealed police on the A1174 at Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, spotted him at the wheel, with two passengers inside.
After officers swung their vehicle around, Bell swapped seats of the moving van with a pal in a bid to avoid detection.
Of the burglary, Mrs Beck said: “The small outhouse in the rear yard was used to store scrap metal from the husband’s job as an engineer.
“The lady left the property at 9am and returned at 3pm. She went into the yard and didn’t notice anything untoward.
“But she checked her CCTV and footage showed a scrap van with two males on the top of the cab.
“One climbed onto a wall and into the yard, and the other was on the wall.
“The metal was passed out of the shed, put in the van, and the van drove off.”
Mrs Beck told magistrates in South Tyneside the defendants were known to police and easily identified.
Of Bell’s driving offences, she added: “At 11.05am officers were traveling on the A1174 Hull Road when they saw a Ford Transit flatbed vehicle.
“There were three males, and the driver was not wearing a seatbelt.
“They saw the driver swap seats with a passenger as the van went through traffic lights.”
Robin Ford, representing roads worker Wilkinson, said his client was currently subject to a suspended sentence for burglary and other offences.
He said the shed crime should have been dealt with as part of the same sentencing hearing.
Paul McAlindon, defending jobless Bell, said his client had been jailed for 12 weeks for burglary in October and was on post-sentence licence.
Mr McAlindon added: “These matters are all of some age. The facts are not in dispute.
“He was jailed last year for the first time, it was a salutary lesson.”
Both defendants pleaded guilty to burglary and were ordered to pay the homeowner £250 each in compensation.
Bell also pleaded guilty to driving while banned – he was disqualified for a year in August under the totting-up system - and driving without insurance.
For driving while disqualified, he was jailed for eight weeks, suspended for 12 months, and given a fresh 20-month roads’ ban.
He was also made subject to a six-week, 7pm to 7am electronically monitored curfew.
There was no separate sentence for driving without insurance, and there were no court costs or victim surcharge for either defendant.
