by Julia Roberts

A burglar who raided a Maidstone store to help pay for his grandfather's funeral was jailed for two years today.

James Bird, 29, was said to have been in an "emotional state" and desperate for cash when he and two other men broke into the Co-op branch in Borough Green.

Any loot was to be shared equally and, said defence counsel Alan Edge, Bird wanted to give his grandfather a "proper send-off".

However, a judge at Maidstone Crown Court told the father-of-one today that he was a "well-practised thief with a warped sense of values".

Bird, of Horrell Road, Sheldon, Birmingham, and his accomplices burgled the Co-op in Station Approach just before 11pm on November 2.

They cut open the back of a cashpoint machine to steal the cash cassettes, and also helped themselves to cigarettes. Their total haul was worth £19,000, but police were alerted by a member of the public and the gang fled in a Vauxhall Astra which had been stolen in a car-jacking in Birmingham a few days earlier.

The raiders then led police on a chase reaching what prosecutor Keith Yardy described as "grossly excessive" speeds of 120mph before hitting a kerb and being struck to the passenger side by a police car.

Two of the burglars escaped but Bird was found in the back seat of the Astra, still wearing his balaclava.

The cash cassettes from the machine and the cigarettes were all recovered from the car boot. The Astra, worth £10,000, was an insurance write-off.

Bird admitted burglary and aggravated vehicle taking. But his claim that he merely acted as a look-out during the break-in was rejected by Judge Jeremy Carey.

"It was, in my judgment, a well-planned and premeditated crime in which you took a full part," he remarked.

"You have to take the consequences of having teamed up with others, knowing this was to happen, and you are equally culpable."