A HEROIN addict has been jailed after attempting to steal diesel from a York industrial estate.

Davie Lee Wilson-Cooper was sentenced to nine months in prison after he was caught red-handed trying to steal fuel from a tank at Ashbridge Concrete, at Monks Cross, earlier this year.

Police were called in the early hours of May 17, to reports of a group of men acting suspiciously at the site.

Officers saw Wilson-Cooper, along with another man, using a power tool to remove diesel from a concrete mixer at the site.

York Crown Court heard the two men ran off after seeing the police, dumping an electrical saw in a bin on the way, and then climbed up nearby building to evade officers. They later came down and were arrested.

During a later search of the site, police found a spanner and pipe grips and an accomplice in a van nearby, where they also discovered bolt croppers, an axe, electric saw blades and a knife.

The owner of the Ashbridge Concrete site later discovered metal fencing surrounding the premises had been cut open. He estimated the damage at £1,000.

Wilson-Cooper, 19, of Southview Hostel, York, later pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted theft and also admitted a separate charge of possessing heroin.

He was discovered with 21 wraps of the Class-A drug outside York Hospital on March 26, last year.

He told police the wraps – equivalent to about three grams of heroin – were for his own use, saying he had no recollection of being on the Wigginton Road site.

Recorder Guy Kearl QC heard that Wilson-Cooper was addicted to heroin, which he said he funded through gambling, and that he had an “extensive record” including possessing a blade in public, theft, criminal damage and public-order offences among others.

Wilson-Cooper was jailed for nine months for the theft and a further month for the drug charges after the judge told him he had exhausted all other sentencing options in the past, leaving him “no choice” but to send him to prison.

Recorder Kearl said: “It was a sophisticated operation – you went equipped to steal.

“You show no regard for the victims of your crimes, nor the courts who are doing their best to assist you. I have no option but to impose an immediate custodial sentence.”