A BURGLAR has been handed a six-and-a-half month prison sentence after pleading guilty to five crimes committed just two days before he appeared in court.

John Ratcliffe, of no fixed address, admitted one burglary, one attempted burglary, one theft, one count of assaulting a police constable and one count of criminal damage.

The 33-year-old pleaded guilty to the offences at Oxford Magistrates’ Court on December 6 and was sentenced at the same hearing.

Two days earlier on the evening of December 4, Ratcliffe stole a bag from a room in Oxford Brookes University, in Gipsy Lane, Oxford, and tried to get into a locked part of the university to find other things to steal.

When he was unsuccessful he went to Headington Girls School, in Headington Road, Oxford, and stole a bag.

Police were called to the school and an officer was assaulted as he tried to arrest Ratcliffe.

Once he was in police custody and in the back of a police van, he caused damage to the van.

After he was arrested he was charged the following day and pleaded guilty to all the offences on December 6.

Magistrates sentenced Ratcliffe to six-and-a-half months in prison and ordered him to pay an £80 victims’ surcharge.

Speaking after the hearing, Det Sgt Bill Sykes said: “This is an excellent result which proves how quickly police and the criminal justice system can act to remove a criminal from the streets and put them behind bars.”