A MOTHER handed her son in to the police after he broke into her home to steal the keys to the pub where she was manageress.

Craig Roddam let himself into the pub, in Thornaby, while it was closed and stole £260 from the safe, Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday.

His mother, Carol, called police when she woke at her home nearby to find her purse and the keys to the Market Tavern missing.

When Roddam was arrested a short time later on October 24 last year, he had three wraps of heroin with him, said Alexander Menary, prosecuting.

In a victim impact statement, an "angry and upset" Mrs Roddam said: "I don't like getting him into trouble, but he only has himself to blame."

She added: "I hold a position of trust and acts like this put my livelihood in jeopardy.

I'm not prepared to put up with it any more."

Roddam, 22, wept in the dock as his lawyer, Robert Mochrie, said: "He would like to apologise through me to his mother."

Mr Mochrie said: "Mr Roddam is keen to tell his mother, who I understand is in the public gallery, that he is sorry for what he has done."

Judge George Moorhouse yesterday jailed him for a total of ten months after telling the drug addict: "You should be ashamed of yourself."

Mr Mochrie said his client conceded custody was inevitable, but added: "There was nobody present in the pub when the burglary was committed, there was no ransacking and there was no significant loss."

Roddam, of Cobden Street, Thornaby, admitted theft, burglary and possessing Class A drugs at an earlier hearing.