A REPEAT offender who burgled a shop within days of being released from prison is back behind bars.

Bryan Chubb and an accomplice smashed their was into the Gorse Hill branch of Co-op and plundered thousands of pounds worth of cigarettes.

But Chubb, 33, who has more than 130 previous convictions, left a trace of his blood on the counter after cutting himself on the broken glass.

Hannah Squire, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that Chubb had been jailed for six weeks in April for another bout of shoplifting.

But within a day or two of his release at the halfway point of the sentence he was back out offending, targeting the Cricklade Road shop in the dead of night.

Miss Squire said: "On May 17 the internal alarm went off just after 3.30am in the morning.

"When the police arrived it was clear entry had been made to the building, a window had been smashed. The focus of the intrusion was the cigarette counter.

"The majority was stolen, although some were on the floor, the total amount of cigarettes and tobacco stolen came to just under £4,500."

She said CCTV from the store showed two hooded men going in with bags which they filled with the booty after going straight to the cigarette counter.

After finding the blood stain and having it tested she said it didn't take police long to track down the defendant.

And she said his hapless accomplice is still being hunted after he left his passport at the scene of the crime.

Chubb, of Imber Walk, pleaded guilty to one charge of burglary.

Miss Squire said that as well as his long list of previous convictions going back to 1996 he had already served two jail terms this year.

After getting six weeks in April he was also sentenced to another six week jail term on August 5 for more shoplifting.

"One might think from looking at his record that he is rarely not on licence or some sort of community order," she told the court.

Lee Mott, defending, said his client had only been out a day or so when he committed the offence.

After getting himself off heroin and on to methadone he was topping up his intake by buying the prescription drug on the streets.

He said that Chubb had an ulcerous leg as a result of deep vein thrombosis caused by a drug addiction dating back to his teens.

There was a real risk he could lose his leg, he said, and need a skin graft the size of an A4 piece of paper.

Jailing him for 24 weeks, Recorder Sarah Vaughan Jones QC said: "It is clear from the pre-sentence report that you were unemployed, dependent on drugs and your weekly benefits are insufficient to fund you spending on methadone."