A man has been jailed for robbing a 13-year-old girl and her friend of a mobile phone in Sutton.
The girls were using the phone as a torch to search for change which the second 13-year-old had dropped.
They had just been to Tesco Express, Alfreton Road, Sutton and were on their way home as it was getting dark, Nottingham Crown Court heard.
Anthony Sansom (25) approached them as they were looking for the coins.
“He demanded they hand over the phone or he would stab them,” said Jim Metcalf, prosecuting.
The girls said he had his hand in his pocket and they thought he might have a knife.
Mr Metcalf said: “They were extremely scared and ran off, dropping the phone and their shopping.”
As they turned round to look they saw him pick up the Blackberry phone valued at about £100.
The police were able to trace it to another man who said he had bought it from a third man.
The trail led back to Sansom, who claimed he had found the phone in the street but was picked out on a video identification parade by one of the girls.
Sansom, of Vicars Court, Clipstone Village, pleaded guilty to the robbery after 6pm on October 17 last year.
He had been given a suspended sentence in 2008 for house burglary.
In mitigation it was said he had been living on a friend’s sofa at the time after becoming estranged from his family following a drug problem.
He was now no longer estranged and had accommodation and work and could pay compensation.
But Judge Richard Pugsley told him: “The message must go home that bullying of children will not be tolerated. Parent and teachers know how easy robbing young children is.”
The sentence was eight months.
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