DIM-witted Ipswich thief Leon Bolsover is behind bars today after being part of a gang which tried to buy alcohol with foreign currency they had stolen from a man just minutes earlier.

DIM-witted Ipswich thief Leon Bolsover is behind bars today after being part of a gang which tried to buy alcohol with foreign currency they had stolen from a man just minutes earlier.

The victim, Mohammed Miah, was in Gippeswyk Park, in Ipswich, at around 4.30pm on July 9 last year when he was approached by a ten-strong group of white men.

In an attack which was claimed to have a racial element to it, Mr Miah was hit in the back of the head and kicked when he fell to the ground.

The gang made off with his wallet, which contained around £60 in cash as well as 1,200 Bangladeshi taka and a five Dubai dirham note.

Just half an hour later and only a few hundreds away, a man, believed to be Bolsover, tried to spend the foreign currency at the Station Hotel, opposite Ipswich train station.

He was later arrested by police.

Robert Sadd, prosecuting at Ipswich Crown Court, said Bolsover, 22, of Sheldrake Drive, had 45 previous convictions for a number of offences.

He originally denied the offence, but made a last-minute guilty plea to a charge of assault with intent before he was due to face trial, denying there was a racial element to his involvement in the attack.

Richard Potts, mitigating, said his client had acted “impulsively”.

He said the latest offence had placed Bolsover in breach of a conditional discharge but he had not come to the attention of police since that time, a fact he put down to the birth of his child.

“There is a suggestion that has brought a realisation of responsibility to him,” he said.

Judge Roderick Newton sentenced Bolsover to 28 months in prison, with half the sentence to be suspended.

He also sentenced him to one-month in jail, to run concurrently, for the breach of a conditional discharge.

Judge Newton said: “This was a cowardly robbery.”