Prisoner serves more time for smashing glass door

Friday 16 February 2018

A prisoner at La Moye has had his sentence lengthened after he threw a brick through a glass entrance to a block of flats.

Scott Leonard Charles Furlong (33), from Jersey, admitted causing malicious damage to the entrance of Windsor Court on 11 November 2017.

The Magistrate’s Court heard that Furlong had turned up to the flats on Windsor Road around 03:00 after he had received a call from his ex-partner a couple of hours earlier reporting that a domestic incident was happening at her flat.

Defending, Advocate Lauren Glynn said the battery on Furlong’s phone “had died so he threw a brick at the glass pane to get in.” Once in the building, Furlong had gone up to the flat but found it empty so ended up sleeping there.

Pictured: Furlong threw a brick through the glass entrance to Windsor Court (source: Google Maps). 

Presiding, Magistrate Bridget Shaw asked the defence lawyer why he had smashed his way in as “he went two hours later [from receiving the call] so it wasn’t exactly an emergency.”

Advocate Glynn said she wasn’t sure if the defendant fully knew what time it was as he was “intoxicated” as he had been drinking that night.  

She said Furlong was “clearly remorseful” and that “it was a thoughtless act when he was intoxicated.”  Advocate Glynn added that as Furlong is already serving a six month prison sentence, for breaching his community service order, he would find it difficult to pay a compensation order to Andium Homes to cover the £767.37 worth of damage, so has opted to serve time instead.

He was handed a seven-week prison sentence to run after his current six-month sentence.

Magistrate Shaw told Furlong it was: “an unjustified action carried out while drunk and it costs somebody else money, a considerable amount of money." She added, “You can’t treat somebody else’s property like this.”