FELIXSTOWE: Bungling burglar Mark Lewis shopped himself – by staring straight into a CCTV camera.

The thief was trying to rip the camera off the wall to hide his crime when his face was captured by the camera as he tried to damage it.

Lewis – who is today beginning a two-year jail term for a string of town centre raids – failed to realise that his image was being recorded by equipment elsewhere and destroying the camera would not mean he had prevented his deed from being filmed.

Officers who later viewed the footage immediately recognised him.

While he was in Thomson Travel, Hamilton Road, Felixstowe, he tried to break into the safe and while he did so he scoffed the staff’s Christmas chocolates.

Workers were delighted as The Evening Star delivered two boxes of chocs to make up for those they missed out on at Christmas.

Lewis handed himself into the police after he learned that officers wanted to talk to him about the offences and then admitted to 13 further crimes as well, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Lewis, 37, of Dinsdale Court, Undercliff Road West, Felixstowe, admitted five offences of burglary and was jailed for 24 months.

Michael Crimp, prosecuting, said Lewis had committed a string of burglaries in and around Felixstowe town centre in December and January.

The court heard that between 1989 and 2011 Lewis had committed 119 offences and Recorder Mr Sandeep Kainth told him he could be described as a “habitual offender”.

Overnight on December 23/24, Lewis broke into Specsavers in Hamilton Road, Felixstowe, and stole �600 cash and other items totalling �4,000.

In January he stole watches and cash from designer clothes shop OMG, Hamilton Road; cash and jewellery from a flat in High Road West; damaged the safe at Thomson Travel; and made off with cash and food during a break in at Concord Asia shipping company in Hamilton Road.

Craig Marchant, for Lewis, said his client had committed the burglaries to get money for drugs.

n Were you one of Lewis’s victims? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or you can send an e-mail to eveningstarletters@evening star.co.uk