A Fife man robbed a “vulnerable” woman of her handbag and went on a shopping spree with her husband’s bank card.
John Harmon targeted his victim as she used a walking stick to get along Lochgelly’s Chapel Street on February 12, 2021.
The 42-year-old snatched her handbag, containing a phone, glasses, and bank cards and a bus pass.
Harmon had admitted the robbery when he appeared from custody at Dunfermline Sheriff Court.
He further pleaded guilty to fraudulently using her husband’s bank card later that day to buy more than £60 worth of alcohol and cigarettes from two different RS McColl stores.
The court heard how Harmon, formerly of the town’s Melville Street, had also breached a community payback order imposed after he was caught with two knives on Auchterderran Road in September 2020.
Robbery was ‘extremely frightening’
Harmon appeared via video link from prison.
Sheriff Charles Macnair told him: “The indictment to which you pled guilty, to which sentence is deferred, was a robbery of a vulnerable lady in that she needed a walking stick to get around.
“You stole items from her by force and then used her husband’s card for fraudulent purposes.
“A street robbery of this sort is extremely frightening for the victim and will always be dealt with in a serious manner”.
Sheriff Macnair sentenced Harmon to 38 months in prison for the robbery.
The sheriff revoked the community order for possessing knives and jailed him for a further 212 days, and another 140 days for breaching curfew conditions.
Defence lawyer Stephen Morrison told the court a social work report indicated his client acknowledged his robbery victim felt afraid and alarmed and that he wished he could apologise to them.
In relation to the possession of knives, the solicitor said his client had been distraught over the death of a former long-term partner and had the blades on him with the intention of self-harming.
At an earlier hearing, the court was told how Harmon was in the passenger seat of a car in the town’s Auchterderran Road when police approached him in relation to another matter.
Officers saw him pull an object from his hooded top and place it by his leg. Following a search, he was found to have two kitchen knives.
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