A booze thief who told Perth supermarket staff that was he carrying a blade and had “friends with guns” has been jailed.
Gary Cummings also invited an employee at Tesco Metro on South Street to meet him around the back of the building to “sort things out.”
HMP Perth inmate Cummings pled guilty to acting in a threatening and abusive manner at the city centre supermarket on September 11 2019.
The single father-of-one was stopped by staff as he tried to leave the store at around 1pm.
An employee approached him and asked him to surrender the items he was holding.
Staff took hold of Cummings by the wrists, at which point the thief threatened to stab the worker, adding he had a “sharp weapon” in his possession.
Ultimately, unarmed Cummings’ threats were empty but he continued his tirade and the court heard he told the employee the pair “should go around to the rear of the shop and sort it out.”
Cummings had also proclaimed that he had “friends with guns.”
Appearing by video link at Perth Sheriff Court on Friday, Cummings also pled guilty to being in possession of diamorphine while in a doorway at Melville Street in the city centre on May 5 2020.
The 31-year-old also admitted stealing three bottles of alcohol from Morrison’s supermarket in Perth, just five days after being caught with half a gram of the class A drugs.
Staff had spotted him on CCTV concealing the bottles in a bag for life on CCTV on the morning of May 10.
His defence solicitor told Sheriff Neil Bowie Cummings was “desperate” and had intended to sell the plundered alcohol to fund his heroin addiction.
Sheriff Neil Bowie sentenced the inmate to a further seven months in total.
In 2014, Cummings was jailed for taking for a joyride an Isuzu truck from a building supplies firm in Milnathort, before deliberately crashing the vehicle into a police car and jettisoning the truck in Dundee.
