A MAN who snatched a woman’s handbag has been given a suspended jail sentence.

David Wilson admitted robbery on January 7 this year after he approached the female victim from behind and stole the bag and contents while she was walking in Marsh House Avenue, Billingham.

Judge Sean Morris had stepped back from jailing 30-year-old Wilson earlier this year, instead deferring sentence on him to see if he could stay out of trouble.

In the meantime Teesside Crown Court heard Wilson had been receiving support from the Moses Project, a Stockton-based project which provides mentoring support to men with drug and alcohol addictions.

Referring to a representative of the project who was in court, Judge Morris said: “One only has to look at your client to see he is a different man."

John Nixon, mitigating, said: “He was given an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.”

The judge told Wilson, of Wynyard Road, Hartlepool, who had stayed crime free since the robbery, that he had stuck to his side of the bargain so he would do the same.

He gave the defendant a ten month jail sentence, but suspended it for 18 months.