Man dismantled gas meters and electrical items in £12,000 rampage at South Yorkshire property

Staff from Target Housing discovered David Boukare had tampered with gas pipes and caused a leak, slashed electrical wires with knives and scissors, and damaged the bath and toilet, at the property for vulnerable people on Fitzwilliam Road, Eastwood, Rotherham, on October 13, last year.

He had moved into the recently refurbished address the day before, said prosecutor Amy Earnshaw, and his neighbour, who had been kept awake by the banging coming from his property, confronted Boukare after discovering her CCTV system had been damaged.

He claimed he could fix it and was seen climbing out of his window to pull the £1,500 camera off the wall.

The woman described this as "quite terrifying" and said it put her vulnerable mother at risk.

Boukare first came to the police’s attention in Hartlepool, on September 21, when he was found interfering with a gas meter outside a house with a screwdriver and a butter knife.

He had also damaged cables supplying CCTV, security lights and Sky TV.

Three days later he was arrested with a butter knife and a claw hammer, having caused £1,000 of damage by ripping door reader fobs from the entrances to Park Towers, in Hartlepool, which he later dumped in bins.

Police arrived in time to see him trying to break into a post office box with a hammer and he told them he was bored.

He also damaged a lift pump panel and a key fob reader in an underground car park, and the roller shutter of a brewery, using a brick, before he was transferred to Rotherham.

Chris Aspinall, mitigating, said Boukare, an asylum seeker, had “carefully disassembled” electrical items as opposed to ripping them out of the walls.

"He was curious and wanted to see how things worked,” he said, adding that a psychiatrist was unable to fully explain his motivation.

Boukare, 32, formerly of Wharton Terrace, Hartlepool, pleaed guilty to nine offences of criminal damage, going equipped, and theft.

On Thursday, Recorder Felicity Davies said it was "extremely odd and troubling behaviour" and sentenced him to 16 months in prison.