ALI: ROBBER GETS FIVE YEARS FOR ROBBING ELDERLY WOMEN
A robber who mugged two elderly women in the space of 24 hours has been jailed for five years.
Akbor Ali, 30, struck twice between November 9 and 10, 2010, on both occasions stealing the victims’ handbags.
The first victim, Margaret Webb, had the last £30 of her weekly pension snatched while the second woman had a prescription stolen..
It later emerged the second woman, Carol Garguilo, had been robbed by drug addict Ali two years earlier.
Today (FRI) at Snaresbrook Crown Court he was jailed for five years after he pleaded guilty to the two muggings and two further charges of handling stolen goods.
Ali was heard to have 30 convictions for 60 previous offences.
Sentencing Ali Judge George Khayat said: ‘I want to make it clear that I take a very serious view of these offences.
‘You are a persistent criminal and have been a criminal since a very young age and it appears nothing the court has done seems to have worked.
‘In the case of Mrs Webb it is almost heart-breaking that you took all the money that she had; that she had to do without her pension to feed your greed or your addiction.
‘For Mrs Garguilo she lost everything she owned including a notebook that contained names and numbers of old friends and a prescription for her diabetes medication – which she badly needed.
‘What is worse, though I am satisfied that you would not have known, you had robbed her some two years before in a lift.
‘If ever there was a case that deserved immediate imprisonment measured in years this is that case.’
Prosecutor Babaatunde Alabi told the court the first robbery took place on November 9, 2010.
He said Ali and a second male had attacked Mrs Webb as she entered a block of flats in Whitechapel, east London, and snatched her handbag.
The second robbery happened the following day when Ali grabbed Mrs Garguilo’s handbag as she walked down an alleyway near to Shadwell train station.
The court heard that Ali left a shoe behind him at the scene of the second robbery and police identified his DNA on it.
During a search of his home officers discovered a number of bank cards including one of a woman who had been mugged on November 11, 2010, the day after Mrs Garguilo
The court heard the woman’s card had been used to buy £300 of mobile phone credit.
Ali, of (Flat 3) Dundalk House, in Clark Street, Stepney, east-London, pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and two counts of handling stolen goods.
ENDS
