A callous thief who left a frail 86-year-old Dundee dementia sufferer “frightened to death” has been jailed for two years.
Lynn Stewart, 46, was seen on CCTV pushing her way into the pensioner’s home in the city’s Charleston area, violently struggling with him and grabbing a wallet from his back pocket and counting out the cash in front of her distraught victim.
Sheriff Richard Davidson described the CCTV footage as “some of the most sad circumstances” he had ever seen.
Stewart, a prisoner at Edinburgh, admitted two charges of assault and robbery committed on June 10 and 15 last year.
The court heard Stewart was a family friend of the pensioner, but his family installed security cameras in his hallway after neighbours said she had repeatedly been seen visiting his house.
Weeks later, neighbours said she had again been at the door, but the pensioner’s condition meant he could not remember any incidents having taken place. The family reviewed CCTV footage and found the first of two horrifying incidents captured by the camera.
The footage showed Stewart turning up at the man’s door and being allowed in. As she went to leave the house, she began struggling with him, restraining him as she rifled through his pockets, picking out his wallet and taking cash before making off.
Family members later found a second, even more disturbing incident, showing her pushing her way into the home as the man tried to hold the door shut.
After a struggle, she managed to pull the pensioner’s wallet from his back pocket before counting the cash in front of him.
The man is then seen looking out of his door as Stewart made off.
The court heard that Stewart spent years caring for her own elderly mother before developing a heroin addiction.
Sheriff Richard Davidson said: “You pled guilty to two separate, but related, charges of attacking a frail gentleman with health difficulties.
“You did this to get money to fund your heroin habits which had taken over your life. That has to be set against the background of you caring for your own mother, who deteriorated and then died.
“You allowed the gap that had arisen to not having your mother to use heroin and developed a vicious addiction.
“You cannot be allowed to cause harm, distress and to a small degree injury to an elderly man. He was frightened to death.”