A burglar who broke into the home of an elderly couple after a 12-hour drinking binge at his redundancy party has been jailed.
Gregory Scupham, 31, also downed Valium at the event at Alwoodley Rugby Club, which was organised to say farewell to his colleagues after losing his £40,000-a-year job.
Scupham caught a taxi after the event but instead of going home broke into the property of a couple aged in their 80s.
Leeds Crown Court heard Scupham’s parents lived just 400m away and knew the victims from church.
He stole two televisions and a bottle of Southern Comfort but was caught after he took a swig from a yoghurt drink in the fridge.
Scupham, who has previous convictions, left the drink on a kitchen work top and it was later found to contain his saliva.
He was jailed for 16 months after the judge told Scupham he had committed a “particularly mean offence”.
The court heard Scupham had been drinking from 5pm to 5am when he committed the offence on the morning of October 19 last year.
The elderly couple were awoken by the burglar alarm and discovered around £1,300 worth of property missing.
Scupham, of Buxton Oval, Alwoodley, was arrested after his DNA was linked to the bottle.
He initially denied the offence, claiming he must somehow have come into contact with the bottle at a shop.
Adrian Pollard, mitigating, said Scupham had a long-standing problem with drug abuse throughout most of his teens and twenties.
But aged 29 he turned his back on drugs and managed to turn his life around and secured a well paid job in the waste recycling industry.
Mr Pollard said: “He lost that employment not due to any incompetence and within a short time he was misusing substances again.
“He has a medical certificate from his GP to say that he was suffering stress but accepts that that is not an excuse for committing the offence.”