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Serial Oxford bike thief who stole again while awaiting sentencing jailed

Alan Goodman admitted string of thefts including e-bike belonging to hospice doctor

A serial bike thief in Oxford who stole again while he was awaiting sentencing for previous thefts has been jailed.

Oxford Crown Court was told that Alan Goodman, aged 38(pictured above), stole an electric bike belonging to a hospice doctor and worth more than £3,000 on 7 September, reports the Oxford Mail.

The owner of the bike, who works at the city’s Sobell House Hospice, activated its GPS tracker, enabling police to trace it, albeit with a damaged front pannier and missing rear child seat.

The court heard that Goodman, a drug addict, had committed a series of bike thefts over the past 18 months.

Those included stealing a bike from outside a supermarket in Didcot in April 2020, with Goodman insisting he believed it belonged to a friend and claiming he subsequently dumped it, although the bike has never been retrieved.

He also stole a bike from Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital in June this year, and attempted to steal another the following month from a bike shed on the city’s Keble Road.

A security guard tried to shut the door of the storage unit to trap Goodman, but he managed to push the door open and escaped after swinging a bike lock at the guard.

He had been granted bail at Oxford Magistrates’ Court last month after he admitted theft, common assault and criminal damage.

He had been due to be sentenced for those offences at Oxford Crown Court on 1 September but failed to appear, claiming that he believed he had contracted coronavirus but was unable to contact the court or his solicitor since he had no credit on his mobile phone.

A week later he stole the doctor’s e-bike, and told in his latest court appearance by Recorder Emily Formby QC that he would have to pay the victim £260 in compensation, he replied, “She got her bike back, your honour.”

Goodman, whose defending council Emma Hornby said in mitigation that he had used heroin and crack cocaine for nearly two decades but was now receiving help from a drug dependency charity, also admitted being in breach of a three-month suspended jail sentence handed down in 2018 after he stole a bike valued at £3,000 from a shop in Oxford.

The judge told him: “I have spent time thinking about everything that has been said on your behalf this morning trying to consider what the best sentence to pass is to reflect your offending behaviour and the drug addiction that sits behind your offending.”

She said he had shown no remorse and only a custodial sentence was appropriate given the seriousness of his crimes, jailing him for 22 weeks with an additional two months’ imprisonment for breaching his previous suspended sentence.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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9 comments

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0-0 | 2 years ago
3 likes

I think the situation needs to be handled in a delicate manner.
So, I would incinerate him, then use his ashes to fill in some pot holes.

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Awavey | 2 years ago
1 like

The guy is a serial bike thief and wears a jumper with a huge bicycle on it, is this some clever level of irony or bantz I've not been aware of before.

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Creakingcrank replied to Awavey | 2 years ago
1 like

Probably makes you look less suspicious when you are hanging about in the bike shed, or pedalling off on a shiny 3k bike....

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chrisonabike replied to Awavey | 2 years ago
4 likes

Awavey wrote:

The guy is a serial bike thief and wears a jumper with a huge bicycle on it...

It'd be clearer if he wore a black and white stripy jumper and an eye mask.

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RoubaixCube | 2 years ago
1 like

I willing to bet that he'll be back doing the exact same thing within hours of his prison release. Its like an addiction to him.

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Blackthorne replied to RoubaixCube | 2 years ago
3 likes

Like an addiction? You might not have finished the article. It is an addiction, he seems trapped in a hopeless spiral. Sad

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chrisonabike replied to RoubaixCube | 2 years ago
4 likes

There are few things more expensive than an integrated criminal justice system and health / social care system but one of them is a disconnected criminal justice system and health / social care system.

Or bring back hanging in bike-chains for cycle stealing.  Better scrap the appeals process though as that may be even more costly...

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SimoninSpalding replied to chrisonabike | 2 years ago
1 like

Agreed, second day in a row where we have an article about a persistent offender where the system seems unable/ unwilling to address the root cause. There are some interesting if rather old figures here

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-cost-of-acquisitive...

I can't imagine things have changed for the better since then...

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Secret_squirrel replied to SimoninSpalding | 2 years ago
3 likes

See also Katie Price who's in the news today.  Multiple and extensive driving bans and yet somehow she's allowed on the road only to repeat the same behaviour again and again.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/16267111/katie-price-arrested-alle...

 

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