A KNIFEMAN was caught driving while disqualified less than three months after he was jailed for doing almost exactly the same thing.

Lee Turner, 32, was given eight months inside in January for driving while disqualified and possession of a blade – although he’d served much of his time on remand waiting for his trial at the magistrates’ court.

Then on Easter Monday, he was back before the justices facing charges of taking a vehicle without consent, driving while disqualified and possession of a blade.

Prosecutor Graham Dono told the court that two cars – a Ford Fiesta and a Citroen – were stolen from a compound in Handel Street, Gorse Hill, last month.

On March 31, traffic cameras clocked the Ford being driven around Swindon. Efforts to track down the car by police officers initially came to nothing. However, later that day police found the car parked up in Oxford Street, in the Railway Village.

As officers lay in wait they saw Turner come out of a house in Harding Street and get into the Ford.

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Lee Turner Picture: WILTSHIRE POLICE

They pulled the car over at the junction of Oxford Street and East Street. Turner was initially arrested on suspicion of stealing the vehicle. He protested: “I was only moving a f***ing car and I’m getting done for it.”

READ MORE: Jail for banned driver caught with knife in the car

When he was taken to the police station he was subjected to a strip search and, asked if he had anything on him he shouldn’t, dropped his trousers – causing a small lock knife to tumble to the floor.

Magistrates were told that Turner had two previous convictions for possession of a bladed article, making him subject to rules requiring the court to impose a six month minimum sentence.

His last conviction, for which he was sentenced in January, was for possession of a large hunting knife. The blade was found in a sheath on the passenger seat of a purple Toyota Urban Cruiser that traffic cops watched Turner drive into the Chiseldon petrol station last October.

Gordon Hotson, mitigating, said his client’s mental health was “at absolute rock bottom”. He was in the middle of a mental health crisis when he was arrested by the police.

Probation officer Michelle James told the justices that Turner was released from prison on February 26 on licence. No decision had yet been made about whether or not he would be recalled.

Since returning to Swindon from Gloucester, where he was in a probation hostel, he had struggled to get a prescription for a substitute for the class A drugs to which he had been addicted. He had gone back to taking illegal drugs and was said to be spending up to £300 a day on his habit. Turner had recently told his probation officer “I’ll either start robbing dealers or I’ll be dead” after hearing there would be delays in obtaining his “script”.

Turner, of Sheppard Street, town centre, pleaded guilty to taking a vehicle without consent, driving while disqualified and possession of a bladed article.

Magistrates jailed him for six months, banned him from driving for 16 months and ordered he pay a £128 victim surcharge.

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