Shoe print and slow feet lead to jail time for burglar

A burglar's feet let him down and ensured he was quickly caught and ultimately locked up.

Steven Bowler was jailed this week after being linked to two burglaries and an attempted break-in too.

The three offences happened within minutes of one another, with one elderly homeowner catching Bowler in her house.

Having been woken in the early hours of the morning on 14 September, the woman quickly realised there was an intruder in her bungalow.

She immediately raised the alarm, while Bowler ran out of the property and into the night, having left a shoe tread mark behind on a windowsill.

He didn't flee quickly enough though from the third Sutton-in-Ashfield home he'd targeted that morning – a fact that wasn't discovered until later.

In the meantime, police made their way straight to the bungalow, with a mixture of Operational Support and response officers conducting an area search.

This was supported by a drone equipped with thermal cameras flying high above, who pointed officers in the direction of someone seen acting suspiciously.

Armed Policing officers on the ground then spotted Bowler soon afterwards, who they thought – rightly as it turned out – was the person they were looking for.

When searched, a bank card and a set of car keys were discovered that, following further inquiries, were found to have come from another home the fleeing thief had just burgled.

With that evidence pointing to one break-in, Bowler was then linked to the bungalow one too, when the shoe print on the windowsill was found to match the tread on his trainers.

If that wasn't enough, a doorbell camera also caught him in the act of committing crime number three, as he tried a door handle to another property on the same road as the bungalow.

Faced with the evidence against him, Bowler, 40, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to the two counts of burglary and one attempted burglary he'd been charged with.

Having been remanded into custody following that hearing, he attended Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday (6 October), where he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Detective Inspector James Oakton, of Nottinghamshire Police, said:

"So many different policing teams played a part in Bowler receiving this well-deserved sentence.  

"Operational Support and response officers worked with the drone team fantastically well first up to quickly locate him after he burgled a bungalow.

"The officers on the ground duly searched Bowler and discovered items on him that pointed to another burglary he'd committed that hadn't been reported yet.

"Following that, some great work by our Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) colleagues linked him to one address based on a shoe print he'd left behind.

"Our Criminal Investigation Department (CID) then stitched all of this evidence together to build a strong case against Bowler that meant he quickly admitted to what he'd done.

"As I say, this was a great example of our policing teams working in tandem to achieve a brilliant result."