Aug 05 – Guilty Verdict For £40K Jewellery Burglar
A man was convicted of burglary for stealing more than £40,000 of jewellery from a shop in Main Street.
A jury of nine gave a unanimous guilty verdict for Guillermo Lopez Castro after a five-day trial finished at the Supreme Court this morning.
The burglary took place on 2nd March last year at around 4.30am, when four men were seen on CCTV trespassing into a shop and stealing jewellery.
Lopez Castro, of Willis’ Road, denied his involvement and claimed to have been asleep at the time of the incident, after returning home earlier after a tobacco smuggling operation at Western Beach.
Officers were called to the scene and recovered a black wooly hat nearby, a hammer, a screwdriver and a ring cabinet near the Forty Steps area. DNA testing on the hat and the ring cabinet showed that Lopez Castro was a match.
The court heard the shop’s owner passed away after the incident, and his son had to close the business because they weren’t able to cover the loss of the stolen items.
Appearing for the defendant, Ian Watts said his client had lost the wooly hat earlier that evening, and someone must have picked it up and used it as a glove in the burglary.
Lopez Castro’s wife appeared as an alibi witness, and told the court her husband was in bed with her at the time.
Senior Crown Counsel Damian Conroy, assisted by Cecile Gomez, told the court Lopez Castro employed the same methods for this burglary as he had in the past – by using to tools to enter a shop in the early hours in the morning.
In summing up the case, Puisne Judge Adrian Jack pointed out there were many similarities between this incident and previous burglaries carried out by Lopez Castro in the past.
He said the defendant did not appear on CCTV footage at Western Beach, and had in fact been spotted earlier by police wearing his wooly hat.
Mr Justice Jack told Lopez Castro: “It is likely that you are going to go to prison for a long time.”
Lopez Castro has been remanded in custody, and a pre-sentence report has been requested. He will appear at the Supreme Court on the 22nd September at 11.30am for sentencing.
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