A Wickford teenager locked up for stealing from a pensioner while posing as a flower seller has had her sentence slashed on appeal.

The 16-year-old girl was sentenced to 12 months' detention at Chelmsford Crown Court in January after admitting to taking £100 from 83-year-old Marjorie Clarke.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, knocked at the pensioner's home in 1997 claiming to be offering flowers for sale and when the elderly woman went inside to find her purse, the teenager followed.

When she had left, however, Mrs Clarke discovered that £100 cash she had been saving in her purse to pay her electricity bill had gone.

But the teenager, who is currently in Bullwood Hall Prison, complained that the crime was a spur of the moment thing and appealed against her one year sentence.

And last week Judge Colin Colston QC, sitting with Lord Justice Roch and Mr Justice Richards at the Criminal Appeal Court in London, agreed to reduce the sentence to four months.

He told the court: "Courts have made plain that the message needs to go out that those who commit offences of this kind on the elderly in their homes should expect to go into custody.

"We bear in mind that she's a young woman from a good home.

"This court is persuaded that the sentence of 12 months detention in a young offenders institution was too long having regard to the personal mitigation and history of this case and the fact that we have heard that this appellant has been kept in an adult prison."

Lisa Dennard, who was with the defendant when the burglary took place, was cleared by Chelmsford Crown Court in December.

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