A Dei-Dei Grade 1 Area Court, Abuja, on Monday, sentenced a 25-year-old mechanic, Jonathan Adams to six months in the correction centre, for stealing a car’s kickstarter in a mechanic shop.
The Judge, Malam Saminu Suleiman, sentenced the convict after he pleaded guilty to committing the offence and prayed the court for mercy.
Suleiman, however, gave Adams an option of payment of N20,000 fine, and warned him to desist from committing crime in the future.
The magistrate also ordered the convict to pay to the complainant, Luka Yakubu, N20,000 as compensation.
He said the punishment would have been stiffer if the convict had not saved the court the rigours of a protracted prosecution.
Earlier, the prosecution counsel, Chinedu Ogada, told the court that Yakubu of behind Police Station Zuba, Abuja, had reported the matter at Zuba Police station on Nov. 21.
Ogada said that sometimes in November the convict came to the complainant’s workshop and pretended to be working on a car and dishonestly made away with a customer’s car kickstarter, valued N20, 000.
He said the convict stole the said kickstarter but was later caught by Yakubu and handed over to the police for investigation.
The prosecutor said that during police interrogation and investigation, the convict confessed to the crime, but all efforts made to recover the stolen item failed.
Ogada said that the offence committed contravened Section 287 of the Penal Code.