Pensioner scared to go out after daylight handbag theft

A man who broke the right arm of an 83-year-old woman during a daylight robbery in the centre of Pembroke Dock has been jailed for four years and eight months.

Daniel Gwynn, aged 25, tried to snatch a handbag from Jeanette Casey as she walked her Jack Russell dog in Memorial Park on September 23.

But she put up a fight and Gwynn had to push her down a bank to get the bag off her.

Swansea Crown Court heard how she was now too afraid to leave her home and could not be sure her arm would ever heal sufficiently to allow her to resume living an independent life.

Gwynn, of Pembroke Street, Pembroke Dock, admitted robbery.

Judge Peter Heywood said the correct sentence was one of seven years but he was obliged by law to discount that to reflect Gwynn’s early guilty plea.

John Lloyd, prosecuting, said Gwynn had approached his victim and asked her for the time. As she looked at her watch he made a lunge for her handbag.

She later told police she had been frightened but also determined not to lose her handbag.

“How dare he do this to me,” she said.

She was taken to Withybush hospital after being helped by two people who happened to be passing.

Meanwhile, police were able to recover a DNA sample from her coat which matched Gwynn’s. After his arrest he took officers to where he had dumped the bag, which has been returned to its owner.

Judge Heywood said Jeanette Casey could no longer face going out for fear of what might happen and could not pick up anything with her right hand.

And she felt that if one of her “less resilient and less robust” friends had been Gwynn’s victim her life would have been destroyed.

“She is angry, and understandably so, at the effect this has had on her life,” added the judge.