A YOUNG burglar narrowly escaped prison after admitting his part in three burglaries in which £21,500 was stolen.

Andrew Paul Ritchie, 19, of Abbotsbury Road, Weymouth, admitted burgling Chesil Beach Caf, Abbotsbury, on his own and the Fathom and Blues and Portland Boat Club sites at Castletown, Portland, with another man at an earlier Weymouth Magistrates' Court hearing which had been adjourned for reports.

Prosecuting, Tom Garham said the caf was burgled on April 15 after Ritchie got in via an extractor fan, stealing a large quantity of catering equipment and food worth £2,000.

On April 21-22 the Fathom and Blues diving shop premises and Portland Boat Club mast shed were raided by Ritchie and another man, said Mr Garnham, and they got away with items worth £16,000 and £3,500 respectively.

Police arrested Ritchie at a house in Littlemoor, Weymouth, on April 26. There they found catering equipment in the kitchen and seven outboard motors and two large holdalls of diving equipment in a nearby garage.

Mr Garnham said that a large quantity of diving equipment was still missing, while the caf, which had only been open three days at the start of the season when it was raided, had been forced to close at Easter with an estimated £5,000 loss in trade.

The total amount of all items still missing from all three burglaries was more than £4,000, he said.

District Judge Roger House, sitting at Weymouth Magistrates' Court, said the burglaries had been "a great nuisance".

He added that he was not sending Ritchie to prison because of the circumstances of the burglaries "and because I have heard that you are very easily led".

He sentenced Ritchie to a 100-hour community punishment order and an 18-month community rehabilitation order.

Ritchie, who was told that he was being given "a very, very generous chance", was also ordered to pay £1,000 compensation.