A MOTHER who used her nine-year-old son to shoplift at a York superstore has escaped a jail sentence.

York Magistrates heard how Anne Ellerby, 27, was arrested when making her second thieving trip to Tesco's Clifton Moor store in two days.

Mike Hammond, prosecuting, told the court how on the first occasion, Ellerby and her adult accomplices got away with a bag full of computer games.

On the second, she handed a bin full of electronic entertainment items worth £884 to her son for him to carry out of the store.

"He was observed carrying this waste bin out of the shop, followed by his mother, making no effort to pay," said Mr Hammond.

Store detectives were on the alert and caught them.

Ellerby, of Redgrave Close, off Huntington Road, York, pleaded guilty to two charges of shoplifting. She was jointly charged with a man who was not before the court. The boy is too young to be charged with a criminal offence.

Magistrates adjourned her case for a pre-sentence report, but decided that she should not be sent to prison when she returns to court on January 31. She was released on bail with a condition to keep out of Tesco's York branches.

Mr Hammond said Ellerby and accomplices went to the Clifton Moor superstore on December 8. They put computer games in a bag which was foil-lined to prevent anti-shoplifting detectors going off.

The next day, the same gang returned to the same store, but this time the nine-year-old boy was with them.

The adults put DVDs and computer games in a Tesco waste bin and then gave it to the child to carry out of the shop.

For Ellerby, Liam Hassan said his client was a heroin addict. The crimes were to fund her addiction.

She was a single mother who lived on benefits, though she had had jobs in the past.

She had had to give up the last job, at a petrol station, because it involved night shifts and she had difficulty getting child care for her son.