A couple discovered a drunk burglar hanging upside down in their lounge in the middle of the night after his shoelaces got caught on their window frame.
Lee Kenneth Moore tried to sneak into a ground floor flat through a window that had been left open in York city centre on July 15 this year.
But his attempt to steal items from the property fell at the first hurdle when his foot got stuck in the window lock at around 3am.
The 41-year-old was then heard ‘moaning and groaning’ by his startled victims who were awoken by the noise he was making.
When they asked him ‘what on earth he was doing’, Moore replied: ‘I don’t know where I am.’
Judge Simon Hickey described the incident as ‘one of the most inept burglaries that has appeared before me for quite some time’.
Prosecutor Leila Taleb said Moore had positioned recycling bins outside the flat to break in through the small living room window.
But as the intruder crawled through, his laces got snagged in the frame and he was left dangling like a bat.
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Moore had been roaming the streets and spotted an opportunity when he saw the open window, York Crown Court heard.
Ms Taleb said the female victim had been watching films with her partner and went to bed at around midnight after leaving the window open.
When the couple were awoken by ‘somebody moaning and groaning at about 3am’, her partner went to check the living room and ‘saw a man hanging upside down from his shoelaces which had been caught on the window frame’.
The woman followed to find her partner in the lounge and the upside down man whose head was on her sofa.
Her partner tried to help the burglar ‘get unstuck’ but the couple became concerned because they ‘didn’t know his intentions’.
The woman called the police while her partner restrained Moore and officers turned up 10 minutes later to arrest him.
They noticed that three recycling bins had been stacked outside the living room which Moore had used to climb through the window.
Moore was taken into custody but was so intoxicated through drink and drugs that he was taken to hospital to be checked out, the court heard.
He pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to steal at an earlier court hearing and was sentenced to two years and four months behind bars on Tuesday after being remanded in Hull Prison.
The court heard Moore had a ‘shocking’ criminal record, having racked up 116 previous offences.
His 59 previous convictions were ‘littered with thefts’ and he had accumulated five burglary convictions in a four-year period between 2018 and 2022.
Matthew Stewart, mitigating, said Moore had been ‘walking through the city’ after going out ‘drinking to excess’ before he made the ‘spontaneous’ decision to break into the flat.
He said Moore, a prolific shoplifter, had been living off benefits and had a drink problem and mental health issues.
Judge Mr Hickey branded the attempted break-in ‘incredibly inept, but nevertheless quite frightening’.
Earlier this year, a man ‘pretended to be a mannequin’ in a shop window to ‘steal jewellery’, while another burglar pulled himself a pint before making off with £450-worth of booze at a hotel bar.
In other bizarre burglary news, one thief even cleaned up after himself after stealing six cupcakes in one of the most long-winded, confusing thefts ever.
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