Jailed Teenage Looter Is Committed Christian

A teenage looter jailed today for breaking into branch of Currys during last-years riots, is a committed Christian, and aid worker.

Daniel Sartain-Clarke, 18, was handed a sentence of 11 months, after admitting burglary during the disturbances which swept the country last August.

He was found by police in the store room of a branch of electrical retailer Currys, in Clapham, South London.

After his arrest he needed six stitches in his head following an altercation with police.

Committed church goer Sartain-Clarke hit the headlines, when his mother was threatened with eviction from the council flat where she lives with her children.

Today Judge Ian Darling sentenced the teen, who has no previous convictions, to 11 months in jail, saying that his was a particularly tragic case.

"Perhaps of all the cases I have seen arising from this incident yours is one of the most tragic," he said.

"Curiosity, opportunity, perhaps matters not but I am struck by the fact that there's nothing in your background to explain why it should be that you'd seize the opportunity to see what you could steal.

"Unlike many who contented themselves with walking around the shop floor you made your way downstairs to the store room presumably because there was nothing left to steal upstairs.

"You are clearly an exceptional young man. You are a committed Christian with a capital C and a small C and an aid worker. I have reams of references attesting to you. You are a helper and a doer."

The judge noted that the teen, who suffers with poor health and depression, was not a habitual offender. "This is as out of character as it's possible to imagine," he said.

Because of the threat of eviction which hangs over the head of Sartain-Clarke’s Spanish born mother Maite De La Calva, 43, this was one of the most high profile cases to arise from the riots, which saw a spate of attacks on property and people in towns and cities across England.

Now Wandsworth Council who own the £225,000 flat on Francis Chichester Way, Battersea, where Sartain Clarke lives with his mother and eight-year-old sister Revecca, will be interviewing Ms De La Calva before they make a final decision.

Other councils are also planning to evict families of looters, as they are in breach of tenancy obligations which forbid household members and visitors from engaging in a range of criminal and anti-social activities. Breaches of the agreement render them liable to eviction.