A serial burglar who raided houses in Taunton and Axminster on consecutive days has been jailed after he was caught by nosey neighbours.

Steffan Ayres was stopped by passers-by who challenged him as he was carrying valuable power tools to a car from a house he had just raided in East Devon.

He burgled the house the day after he carried out an almost identical raid on a house in Taunton which was empty and being renovated. He cut his finger as he jemmied open the front door.

Ayres took his then girlfriend Samantha Ravenor with him the next day when a friend to ok them for a pub lunch in Lyme Regis and they stopped off to burgle a house Crewkerne Rd, Axminster, on the way home.

The house was also empty and having work done on it but Ayres and Ravenor aroused the suspicions of dog walkers, who filmed them on their mobile phone and called the police.

The driver, who had pulled up nearby, was spooked by the confrontation and refused to let them load the stolen tools into his boot, driving off without them.

Ayres and Ravenor were then seen taking the tools back to the house and dumping them in the drive. The police arrived shortly afterwards and Ayres dropped an iron bar which he had used in the break-in on the grass verge.

He is a career criminal with convictions for 140 previous offences, including five dwelling house burglaries. He was living a post-release hostel in Trinity Road, Taunton, at the time after being released from a two and a half year sentence a few months earlier.

That sentence was imposed in 2020 for the burglary of an 88-year-old woman’s home in Mudford Road, Yeovil in which he stole her disabled parking badge and her hearing aid.

Ayres, aged 48, of Brookside Close, Taunton, denied but was found guilty of two burglaries and Ravenor, aged 42, of East Reach, Taunton, denied acting as lookout for the Axminster raid but was also found guilty at Exeter Crown Court last month.

Ayres was jailed for three years and Ravenor ordered to carry out rehabilitation days under a 12 month community order by Recorder Mr Roger Harris.

He told Ayres that he had to impose the mandatory three year sentence because he has more than two previous convictions for domestic burglaries and is subject to the ‘three strikes and you’re out rule’.

During the trial Miss Bathsheba Cassel, prosecuting, said the house in Cotlake Close, Taunton was undergoing renovation work after the death of a previous occupant when it was burgled on the evening of March 25, 2022.

The front door and a garage door were forced open but the only thing stolen was a full can of petrol which had been inside the garage. Ayres DNA was detected in blood left at the point of entry.

He and Ravenor were arrested at 3.40 the next day in Crewkerne Road, Axminster, after they were confronted by worried citizens as they walked up a country lane carrying two cases and two boxes.

All contained tools belonging to a workman who was renovating an upstairs bedroom. One jemmy was returned by accident with the tools and a second was found at Ayres’s feet when he was arrested.

Ayres denied ever being at the house in Taunton and said he had no idea how his blood got there. He said a friend who had taken and Ravenor out to lunch at Lyme Regis had asked them to pick up things from a driveway and that he initially refused but then helped Ravenor agreed.

Ravenor said she knew nothing about a burglary and had taken the tools back when confronted by local people.

 

Mr Rowan Jenkins, defending, said Ayres has reached a turning point in his life where he has resolved to turn his back on the drug addiction that has lain behind all his previous offending.

 

Ayres himself read out a letter which he had written to the judge in which he said he is overcoming anger and resentment at feelings of being let down by the system which arose from abuse in his childhood.