A THIEF faces a £600 bill for taking a new bicycle for a ride about and abandoning it near Millennium Bridge.

Martin Butterworth, prosecuting, said the bike’s owner left it in the bicycle shelter near the Arc Light shelter for the homeless in Union Terrace, York, on November 5.

Her brother had bought it new for her for £600 two months earlier.

But when she returned for it, Joshua Shorrod Nelson, 20, who occasionally stayed at the shelter, had taken it.

He told police later that he had done so on the spur of the moment to ride around on it and had left the bike near Millennium Bridge. It has not been recovered.

Nelson, of Highfield Villas, Sherburn-in-Elmet, pleaded guilty to theft and was ordered to pay £600 compensation to the bike’s owner plus a further £85 in prosecution costs.

Nelson, who was unrepresented, said that when he took the bike, he had just been kicked out of his mother’s home and had nowhere to live and no money.

He had since sorted his life out and was now back at home with his mother.

Mr Butterworth said Nelson was identified as the thief from CCTV film of the bike shelter.