QC brands armed raider ‘incredibly inept’

A ROBBER is facing jail after what a sheriff has called one of the “most incredibly inept and incompetent” crimes she had ever come across.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday heard how Oliver Nicholson, 20, went into an RS McColl’s shop, wearing a balaclava-type mask and carrying a hammer.

But when he demanded the staff open the tills, the manageress told him: “Oliver, I know it’s you” to which he replied: “It’s not Oliver.”

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Nicholson, from Buckie Road, Mayfield, Dalkeith, was a regular customer of the store in Main Street, Gorebridge, and had shopped there earlier in the day of his robbery, the court heard.

He pleaded guilty to assaulting Ann-Marie Wilson, demanding money from her and robbing her of a quantity of money on January 30 last year.

Sheriff Deirdre MacNeill QC described the robbery as: “One of the most incredibly inept and incompetent I have ever come across”.

She was even more surprised when Nicholson’s defence solicitor, Graeme Runcie, told her: “I am not instructed to ask for bail”.

Sentence was deferred for report until March 20.