A REPENTANT mugger confessed to a street robbery 15 months later after being wracked by guilt, a court heard.

Reformed alcoholic Colin Halstead claimed he had to go a police station three times before he could persuade officers that he had held up Abid Sajjad near a cash point, Burnley Crown Court was told.

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And for his honesty the 32-year-old, of Farmhouse Close, Blackburn, was given a two-year suspended prison sentence, after admitting robbery, in Broadway, Nelson, in August 2015.

Prosecutor Stephen Parker said that restaurant worker, Mr Sajjad, had finished his shift when he went to a nearby cash machine and withdrew £40.

He was talking to a cousin on his phone when he noticed a man, 10 feet away, look both ways down the street before snatching the cash.

Mr Sajjad tried to put the mobile phone, an iPhone 5, into his pocket but was punched in the head. The victim fell and feared further violence but the man ran off.

Mr Parker said that the crime went undetected until Halstead walked into Burnley police station on December 18 last year.

He told desk staff that he had attacked and robbed a man in Nelson town centre and wanted to confess, claiming the knowledge had ‘wrecked his life’ and he was an alcoholic.

Defence counsel Mark Stuart said his client had turned his life around since the offence and had secured employment with a stonemason.

He said that Halstead had gone to a police station on the first occasion, to confess and ‘bottled it’. And when he went a second time the desk staff refused to believe him, as he had been drinking.

Later he went back a third time and was taken seriously, the court heard, and he told officers he had been out drinking and gambling with his partner. He had lost a lot of money and had decided to rob Mr Sajjad ‘on the spur of the moment’.

Mr Stuart said: “The police had no idea – he had confessed to the officers what the offence was and where it took place.”

He told the court: “He knew that your honour could send him to prison when he walked into that police station. But he had it on his conscience for 15 months and was wracked with guilt.”

Passing sentence, Judge Beverley Lunt said the victim had been forced to have six stitches for an eye injury. But the judge hoped Mr Sajjad could take consolation from the fact that Halstead now posed a low risk of reoffending.

Halstead, who had a conviction for attempting to rob a bus driver of his takings in 2009, was also ordered to pay Mr Sajjad £300.