A pair of criminals ended up in hot water – after being apprehended by police as they hid in a garden spa.
Ryan Wilkinson, 25, and Adrian Askin, 29, were found by a police dog unit under the lid of the hot tub after a police pursuit.
Their accomplice Cyle Jenkins, 24, was discovered hiding in a trailer in the same garden after the trio carried out a series of violent high-value car thefts across North and East Yorkshire, a sentencing hearing at Sheffield Crown Court heard.
Det Const Alex Dorlin, from North Yorkshire Police, said the thefts were “terrifying and traumatic experiences for the victims”.
At a burglary in the North Yorkshire village of Camblesforth on 21 October 2024, the defendants – who were masked – entered a woman’s home after banging on her door and shouting, ‘it’s the police’, the court heard.
Once inside, they assaulted her and demanded the key to her Audi RS3.
They eventually fled empty-handed after she refused to provide the code to her immobiliser despite being punched in the face, but not before they smashed her mobile phone and took the landline to stop her calling for help.
The following evening, the group struck again in the Gilberdyke area of East Yorkshire and the Carlton area of North Yorkshire.
In Carlton, the victim was said to have been woken in the early hours by his dog barking.
As he entered the kitchen, he was confronted by a masked man armed with a crowbar and an air rifle.
The intruder threatened to shoot him and kill his dog if he didn’t hand over the keys to his Volkswagen Golf R.
The firearm used to threaten the victim was his own air rifle, which was later found inside another Volkswagen Golf R stolen from the address in Gilberdyke.
North Yorkshire PoliceNorth Yorkshire Police said the stolen cars were tracked, travelling in convoy using false number plates, heading towards the village of Austerfield in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
Officers used a stinger device to stop one of the cars, but the driver continued despite several tyres being punctured.
The vehicle went off road before being found heading into a housing estate in Lindholme, police said.
Wilkinson and Askin were tracked to a garden by a police dog unit, where they were found hiding under a hot tub lid.
Meanwhile, Jenkins was discovered hiding in a trailer in the same garden.
All three were charged and later pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated burglary, one count of burglary and two counts of theft of a motor vehicle.
‘Looking over shoulder’
In a victim impact statement read out in court on Friday, the Camblesforth victim said the attack continued to give her nightmares.
“I will never forget what happened that night,” she said.
The man threatened with a firearm told the court how the incident “really shook me up”.
Now, he “would always be looking over my shoulder, paranoid someone was about”.
Wilkinson, of no fixed abode, was jailed for nine years and four months.
Askin, of Poplar Road, Skellow, was jailed for 10 years.
Jenkins, of Princess Avenue, Stainforth, was jailed for nine years and four months.
