A serial burglar who broke into a student house and started packing items into a backpack got more than he bargained for when he was suddenly challenged by two plucky students – who promptly searched him and took back his haul of stolen goods.
Prolific criminal Lewis Guymer shamelessly pretended to have gone to the house to collect a debt that was supposedly owed to a drug dealer called Jimbo. He brazenly started picking up items in the house and putting them into a backpack but his money-making burglary mission ended in disaster.
He had dabbled in crack cocaine for the first time and was “at an all-time low” when he targeted and broke into student houses in a desperate search for cash and valuable items to sell, Hull Crown Court heard.
Guymer, 33, of Denaby Court, off Holderness Road, east Hull, but recently in custody on remand, admitted four offences of burglary and another of fraud using a stolen bank card.
Amber Hobson, prosecuting, said that Guymer carried out burglaries in the student area of Hull, with the first of them in Cottingham Road on February 6. Two male students heard banging noises after 10.30pm. Guymer walked into the house and claimed that he was there on behalf of someone called Jimbo to collect a drug debt.
He picked up a PlayStation, games console controls and car keys and put them in a backpack. He was challenged by one of the students, who told him to put the items back. He was searched by the occupants and told them: “I’d rather you search me than the police.” A pack of gold playing cards was found on him and these were taken from him. All the stolen property was recovered.
On February 14, a female student in Beresford Avenue, off Cottingham Road, woke up at 7am to find a notification that two bank cards had been used. She found the front door ajar and items missing, including an Xbox, a laptop computer, a games console and controls, iPads, two sets of headphones, comic books, motorcycle keys, a purse and bank cards.
Guymer was shown on CCTV using the cards at a Jet garage in Beverley Road at 6.30am and later at Sainsbury’s. A female student later said that the incident had left her feeling overwhelmed and anxious and it had partly affected her university course. “I and my housemates are all paranoid about leaving the property empty,” she said.
One person now volunteered to stay behind if others went out so that someone was there. Precautions were now being taken, including new locks, and she had missed university lectures because of not wanting to leave the property empty while her housemates were at work.
“My house does not feel like my home any more,” she said. “My housemates and I are locking our property away constantly in fear of someone going into our property again.”
On February 16, a student noticed that his e-bicycle and a friend’s bicycle were missing from their shared house in Ash Grove. Guymer and another man were seen on CCTV.
On February 20, Guymer carried out a burglary further afield than the student area and raided a flat, the home of a teacher, in Bishop Lane, near the city centre. He went to the courtyard area outside a house, entered through an unlocked door on an e-bicycle and stole an Xbox games console, a rucksack and a bank card, which he later used at a shop in Holderness Road. The card was declined.
Guymer had convictions for 99 previous offences and he was a third-strike burglar after previous convictions for domestic burglary in 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019 and most recently in 2021, when he was jailed for three years.
Oliver Shipley, mitigating, said: “There’s not much that can be said about this offending. It’s not out of character and it’s disgraceful behaviour. There has been a regular pattern of offending over the last few years.”
Guymer had suffered a drug addiction and he had been a regular long-term user of amphetamine at the time. “He has found himself on the streets at times,” said Mr Shipley.
“He is frank in his admission that, in that time, he had tried crack cocaine for the first time. He was tapping into this type of offending again. The defendant was at an all-time low at the time. He was out on the streets and he had nowhere to go.
“There was clearly some degree of planning in the offences. He has had opportunity after opportunity in the Crown Court.”
Guymer was jailed for four years.