Knife-carrying robber held up vape shop in Leeds and fled with just £15

Connor Horabin, who has a long list of convictions involving blades, targeted the Vape & Wine Village on Hyde Park Road on the evening of Mach 17. He walked into the empty shop at around 8.15pm with a hood over his head, walked straight to the counter and tried to grab the worker’s phone from his hand.

The worker initially thought it was a joke, but then noticed Horabin carrying the knife in his right hand which he had pointed upwards toward the employee. Prosecutor Heather Gilmore told Leeds Crown Court that 24-year-old Horabin then became abusive and demanded he open the till, but the worker said it was not possible.

He then lunged at the worker catching him with the blade on the shoulder, but did not injure him. Horabin then walked behind the counter and demanded the worker hand over whatever he had in his pocket. He gave him around £15 in cash before he left.

Police were able to use CCTV pictures from the shop to identify Horabin before arresting him in the early hours of the next day. During his police interview he made “full and frank admissions”, Miss Gilmore said.

Horabin, of Carberry Place, Hyde Park, admitted offences of robbery and making threats with a bladed article. He could not explain his actions but said he had been drinking and taking drugs.

The court heard he has a lengthy criminal past including an affray in 2014 in which he threatened a woman with a knife, a robbery in 2015, and four further offences of possessing a bladed article between 2016 and 2022.

Mitigating, Derek Duffy said his client had an unhappy upbringing and had been in care since the age of two. He was diagnosed with an attachment disorder at the age of 15 and struggled in an “unstructured environment”.

He said: “He accepts that several years of imprisonment is inevitable.”

A report into his offending deemed to be “dangerous”, so Recorder David Gordon handed him a sentence of seven years and eight months, made up of four years and eight months’ jail, with a three-year extended licence period.