A knife-wielding robber who held up the same Penny On The Move forecourt twice within the space of a week has been sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Back in April we reported how staff at the Barnard Castle site in County Durham were threatened once at 11pm on Monday 30 March, and again on Friday 3 April at around 9:20pm, with the robber brandishing a large knife and taking a total of £370 in cash and £60 worth of tobacco across the two incidents.
While staff were unharmed during the incidents they were nonetheless left shaken, and Penny reduced the site’s opening hours while police conducted their investigations, which lead to Matthew Reece Howe being arrested on Saturday 4 April after a police officer recognised the shoes he was wearing, having remembered them from forecourt CCTV footage of the incident.
The Northern Echo reports that Howe admitted two counts of robbery at an earlier plea hearing, while Durham Crown Court this week heard from one forecourt staff member who described fearing they would be stabbed, and another who said the incident left them feeling threatened and worried, and questioning whether they wanted to keep working at the forecourt.
The paper says the court was told Howe had five convictions for nine previous offences, though his legal team said he has ADHD, which led him to act impulsively, and had turned to drink and drugs following the death of a friend from a fall in the Lake District in 2022.
Howe’s lawyer said he “felt ashamed and disgusted” of his actions, and that he would “never be that man again”. The court was told Howe had weaned himself off drugs while being held on remand in prison, and had lined up a job for his release from prison.
The court’s Recorder imposed a 40-month prison sentence on Howe, required him to give up two knives confiscated from his home by police, and said he would have been sentenced to five years had he not pleaded guilty.
