AN attempt to steal a pair of slippers from a house landed a 24-year-old woman with a three-year jail sentence after a court heard she had a string of burglary convictions.

Newport Crown Court was told that Suzanne Tayler, of Herbert Walk, had attempted to steal the parcel, which had been put through a cat flap by a postman, from a property in Robert Close, Pill.

A neighbour saw her walking down the road, phoned the police and gave what Jason Howell, prosecuting, said was a “running commentary” of Tayler’s actions.

The court heard that when arrested on Tuesday, December 17, she was carrying a screwdriver and a kitchen knife with a seven-inch blade and swore at the policeman.

Tayler pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated burglary.

The court was told that the day before the offence, Tayler was spotted acting suspiciously by another neighbour, Richard Palmer, from his house on Robert Close.

She walked up to two houses on the road and tried to break in, but found she could not force her way into the properties.

Afterwards, she tried to climb over the fence of one of the properties, and later looked around a shed. After she saw the house was occupied, she left.

She was interviewed twice by police.

In the first interview she would not make any comment, but in the second she said she had been carrying a knife in her bag because she had been assaulted a few weeks before.

Judge Thomas Crowther QC said he had seen “moving” letters Tayler had written about her attempts to become free of drugs.

And sentencing her to three years, he said she had committed crimes “absolutely at the bottom of the scale” of aggravated burglary, but told her she will also need to pay a £120 conviction tax.

She has been convicted of similar offences three times before.

The last time, in September 2011, she was sentenced to three years in prison for burglary.