A CRIMINAL from Tremadog is back in prison just 10 days after being released after he admitted stealing from a local shop to pay a drugs debt.

Solicitor Eilian Williams told Llandudno Magistrates that Stephen Smith was terrified that the people he owed would be after him following his return to Tremadog on 8 November.

In the early hours of Monday morning, 13 November he broke into the local Spar store and stole a box containing scratch cards, but three days later he rang the police to confess. The cards were found in a wardrobe at his home.

Smith, 22, of Isgraig, Tremadog, pleaded guilty to burglary and admitted breaching an 18-month conditional discharge imposed in August.

He was jailed for 20 weeks for the burglary and four weeks for criminal damage to the store, to whom he must pay £100 in compensation. The sentences will run concurrently.

Margaret Pierce, who has run Tremadog Spar for five years but worked there for 20, said she had never seen an incident like it in her time there.

“You don’t expect things like this to happen in our little village,” she told the Cambrian News.

Read the full story in today’s Arfon/Dwyfor edition of the Cambrian News