A BRISTOL man has been jailed for almost three years for stealing a car and breaking into two homes in Monmouth.              

Alex Pye, 31, of The Meads, broke into the home of a family who had supported him after he broke up with his partner.

Pye – who the family knew as Alex Smith – had even stayed at the house days before he burgled them and stole their car in the early hours of May 11.

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The family noticed the back door was “partially open” when they woke up at around 7am, and the car keys were missing from the table. When they checked outside, their car had been stolen. Pye had also stolen tobacco and hand creams from the address on Wyefield Court.

In a statement summarised by the judge, Recorder PK Lewis QC, the victims said “they had trusted the defendant”, and the burglary had left them feeling “on edge and anxious in their own home” – to the extent that they were looking to move house.

Pye crashed the car into a house on the corner of Carbonne Close in Monmouth and drove off, with CCTV catching the incident at around 6.30am.

At around 7.15am, he knocked on the door of a house in Monmouth and told the occupant that he had been in a car accident. The man phoned the police, but when he came back to the door, Pye had gone.

The police arrived, and Pye was found hiding behind a wall about half a mile away from where the stolen car had been crashed into a tree. The airbags had deployed and there was Pye’s blood on them, prosecutor Kathryn Lane told Cardiff Crown Court.

Pye was taken by officers to the Grange University Hospital, where he was kept until May 13.

At around 9.30am on May 11, a resident on Old Hendre Road woke up to find a cutlery draw of silver forks in the fridge, with some scattered on the floor of his kitchen. He found there was a silver cake fork missing – which was found on Pye.

Curtis Myrie, defending, said: “He is at a stage where he wants to turn a corner. He wants to genuinely stop offending.

“He knows full well that he is going to get a sentence of imprisonment for some time.”

Recorder Lewis sentenced Pye to a total of 32 months in prison.

Each burglary saw a 32-month sentence, running concurrently. Pye was handed a nine month sentence, running concurrently, for theft of a motor vehicle, and seven days – also concurrently – for failure to appear at court, relating to an offence on October 27.

He received no separate sentence for failing to stop after an accident, driving without a licence, and driving without insurance, but he was disqualified from driving for 40 months and must pay a statutory surcharge of £190.