A MAN who broke into a Marston home before making off with £9,000 in stolen goods has been jailed.

Daniel O’Dong, of Jourdain Road, Oxford, crept into the shared house at Coniston Avenue for the ‘targeted’ burglary on the night of April 20 this year.

Oxford Crown Court heard yesterday how the 28-year old had been given keys to the property as well as instructions from an unarmed accomplice to enter the house to steal a number of high value items.

After ransacking the property he made off with an expensive watch, jewellery, numerous bottles of alcohol, cigarettes, ten handbags worth over £200 as well as more than £1,000 in cash and bundles of foreign currency.

Oneoccupant of the house, whose home is above the one which had been singled out, was standing in the kitchen when she saw the man enter the property but thought he was a housemate and thought nothing of it, even going upstairs to sleep while the burglary took place.

The woman later recalled hearing noises coming from below which ‘sounded like DIY’ and O’Dong telling another man on the phone ‘he had found it’ referring to the watch he had stolen.

Defending, Ronan McCann, said his client, who is originally from Uganda and moved to Oxford in 1993, was ‘not a stereotypical burglar’ and had struggled financially after he was made redundant at an agency working at the BMW Mini Plant.

He was ultimately sentenced to 20 months in prison for the burglary after his earlier guilty plea.