Serial Hartlepool shoplifter who used mobility scooter to hide stolen items 20 times sentenced at Teesside Crown Court

Victoria Wilson, 43, stole and hid property worth about £2,000 in her scooter in the thefts carried out between July last year and February this year.

Teesside Crown Court heard she had the scooter as a result of having both legs amputated.

Prosecutor Cainan Lonsdale said Wilson put a garment, which acted as a canopy, over her legs to hide the stolen property.

He said: “In attempts to conceal the items she would place them underneath the canopy or behind herself and then leave the store.”

She targeted stores including Home Bargains, Boots, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Aldi, Matalan, and Heron Foods, to steal groceries, cleaning products, bedding, make up and body care products.

The court heard Wilson was abusive to staff when confronted during a theft in Lidl last August and threatened she would get her son to “come round and chop your head off.”

And on September 29 when she was due before the magistrates court, she stole £63 or groceries from Aldi in Hartlepool.

Mr Lonsdale said: “She attempted to ride her mobility scooter towards a member of staff who was trying to block her exit.”

The highest value theft was make up and face cream worth £629 from Boots, where she was barred, on January 29.

And she stole £300 of bedding from Matalan on September 25.

The court heard someone else was with Wilson during all of the shoplifting offences, apart from one at Heron Foods on October 4, when she stole around £50 worth of groceries.

Most of the property stolen was never recovered.

But despite the number of offences and value of goods stolen, Wilson, who pleaded guilty, was spared jail.

It was after the judge heard she had she had experienced a number of “tragedies” in her life.

Stephen Constantine, defending, said in mitigation, a report highlighted domestic violence and financial exploitation.

He added social services and community mental health professionals have agreed to help her.

Wilson, of Spurn Walk, Hartlepool, who spent three weeks in prison on remand, told Judge Tim Stead she had been put upon by others adding: “I will never come back again, sir.”

He gave her seven months’ prison suspended for 18 months with an 18-month community order.