A NEWPORT man who stole from a patient and a nurse at a city hospital was jailed on Friday.

Leighton Hodge, 32, entered the private room of a man who was being treated at the Royal Gwent Hospital, after he left it with relatives, and later a nearby staff room on February 8.

He stole a Kindle Fire and a Samsung mobile phone from the room located off Ward 6C West. On entering the unoccupied staff room he took a jacket and a nurse’s purse which contained a debit card and £100 cash.

The nurse who had been stolen from entered the room and became suspicious about Hodge being there and confronted him.

Hodge, of Oliphant Circle, then ran from the staff room and the hospital – but later that day turned up at Newport Central Police Station on Cardiff Road. He lied to officers that he had found the jacket and purse he had snatched from the hospital and he was arrested that evening.

He had initially claimed he was in the hospital to book an appointment in the neurology department.

But on Friday Hodge admitted two counts of burglary at Newport Crown Court, adding to a long string of offences. The court heard he had 105 convictions for 49 offences.

Judge Daniel Williams told Hodge: “You went to the Royal Gwent Hospital out to help yourself to whatever patients or nurses or those using the hospital may have left lying around and that including people who were extremely vulnerable – but you don’t care about such things.”

When he carried out the burglary Hodge was still observing a community order for a fraud handed to him last September in which he used points on a Boots Advantage card without permission of the owner in May 2014. He had been sentenced to a 12 month community order for that crime.

Judge Williams sentenced Hodge to nine months in prison for the burglary. He also passed a two month sentence, which will run concurrently to that, for him committing an offence while observing a community order.