Drug addict stole from cancer patient and blind man to fund her habit

Rhoda Smith has been jailed for six years after preying on vulnerable people

Sick and elderly victims were used by a grieving Bedworth drug addict to fund her habit.

Rhoda Smith has been jailed after stealing and demanding money from a number of vulnerable people, including pensioners, a cancer sufferer, a disabled woman, and a partially-sighted man whose pocket she picked.

Smith, aged 48 of Evans Close, Bedworth, was jailed for a total of six years after pleading guilty to robbery, two charges of burglary and eight offences of theft.

Smith’s husband had died a few months before she started stealing money for drugs.

Charles Crinion, defending, said: “She acknowledges these are horrible and low offences she’s committed, and she is ashamed of her behaviour.”

He said that prior to the spate of offences for which she had to be sentenced, Smith had just two shoplifting convictions many years apart.

He explained: “These offences were committed to fund a drug habit. She had been in control until the death of her husband two months before the offences began.

“She began taking crack cocaine, and then heroin, and it progressed to several fixes a day. It was a very quick decline.”

Jailing Smith, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told her: “I recognise that people can suffer from misfortune, and can get themselves into a mess created by drug addiction.

“But I cannot ignore the way you sought to solve that problem by picking on the sick and vulnerable and elderly. What a thing it is to have their confidence undermined by predatory offending like this.

“There has to be an element in this sentence which reflects public revulsion for this sickening offending.”

I was waiting for a mugshot to appear before posting this news story but none seems to be forthcoming?