Jail for 999 man who stole from a corpse

A paramedic who stole a dead patient's credit cards was beginning a one-year jail sentence last night.

David Wright rifled through the pockets of suspected heart attack victim David Denbow as the 66-year-old lay dead in his back garden.

He came across three credit cards and a piece of paper with a PIN code written on it as he treated Mr Denbow.

Hours later he was captured by CCTV cameras as he withdrew Mr Denbow's money from a cash machine.

Still in his uniform, Wright took out two lots of £250 - the maximum allowed per card.

Wright, 50, a paramedic with East Midlands Ambulance Service, then splashed out £200 on an MP3 player for his wife.

Derby Crown Court heard how police initially treated Mr Denbow's death as a murder when the theft was uncovered.

But after the CCTV footage emerged, police discovered the remaining money in Wright's shorts at the ambulance station in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire.

Father-of-three Wright, from Ilkeston in Derbyshire, admitted the theft last June, as well as a second charge of stealing £40 from another patient.

Judge Abbas Mithani told him: "It is an essential part of the ambulance service that they display the utmost honesty and integrity.

"Any abuse of that trust simply cannot be tolerated.

"Essentially, you stole from a dead person - a fact that rightly generates a considerable amount of revulsion among ordinary, decent people."

Catherine McKeever, mitigating, said Wright was appalled by his behaviour.

She said: "He cannot take these despicable actions back. He himself would describe them as despicable. He is disgusted with what he has done."