Drug addict jailed for Oswestry shop robbery
A drug dealer and recovering heroin addict with a string of convictions has been jailed for 21 months for robbing an Oswestry shopkeeper of cash and cigarettes worth more than £400.
Carl Cowans carried out the raid at the Boozed-Up store, in Salop Road, in November last year.
At Shrewsbury Crown Court, a jury found him guilty of the robbery, but cleared Cowans, aged 35, of a further charge of being in possession of a knife.
The court was told that £445 in cash and some Lambert & Butler cigarettes were stolen from the off-licence and that minutes after the robbery Cowans was seen by police at a flat in Chaucer Road, “soaking wet” and “out of breath”.
Officers recovered the cash from Cowans’s wallet tucked into his waist band and a packet of cigarettes and he was arrested. Shop proprietor Harkamal Dhillon later identified Cowans as the raider.
Mr Kevin Jones, prosecuting, read out Mr Dhillon’s victim impact statement which stated that the experience “made him scared of working in the shop in the evening” and made him “more suspicious about people” in the the area surrounding the premises. He now has two people working in the shop at night.
The court had heard that Cowans had previous convictions for dishonesty, violence and supplying drugs. His previous conviction was in October 2015.
In mitigation Miss Debra White told the court that her client had already spent 173 days in custody on remand regarding the robbery which was in effect almost 12 months.
She said: “He has difficulties with his mental health. When he was in the police cells he was flagged up as someone with suicidal tendencies.”
“It was also correct when he told the court that he had completed his previous licence and that it was the first time that he had done so in 20 years,” Miss White said.
Cowans had denied robbery and being in possession of a kitchen knife. Cowans said the shopkeeper had been confused when he identified him and it was a case of mistaken identity and he had only been in the off-licence on one previous occasion. Denying the robbery, Cowans had claimed he had been with a girlfriend taking drugs at the time of the incident and he had saved up the cash found on him.
But Judge Peter Barrie sentenced Hall, of Garth Owen, in Newtown, to 21 months in prison.
He said: “This offence of robbery of a shop in the hours of darkness is one that that can only be dealt with by a custodial sentence. The shortest sentence that I can pass that will fit the seriousness of this offence is one of 21 months. You must serve half before being released on licence.”
