Rampaging taxi thug bizarrely burgled Leeds charity - while stark naked

Pablo Hernandez was jailed this week for a rampage in which he stabbed a taxi driver, stole his cab and ran people down in Leeds city centre on a busy Friday night. But a week before that, he broke into Joanna’s Project in Holbeck in the middle of the night.

The charity helps disadvantaged women, particularly those stuck in drug addiction and prostitution. When the alarm was tripped just after 3am on January 18 last year, police attended the Sydenham Street building. On entering the building, 22-year-old Hernandez gave himself up. He was wearing a chef’s apron, but nothing else.

CCTV was viewed and it showed that Hernandez, of Tall Trees, Moortown, was outside the building completely naked, and picked up a rock to hurl at the glass panel in the back door to gain entry. He threw it “four of five times” prosecutor Glenn Parsons told Leeds Crown Court.

He admitted non-dwelling burglary, among the “raft” of other offences involving the stolen taxi.

Mitigating, Craig Sutcliffe said of the burglary: “There’s no suggestion there was targeting of the premises, it appears to be random. The extent of what he stole was the apron.”

He said that it was clear Hernandez’s mental health “had been deteriorating”. Judge Tahir Khan KC conceded he was “showing signs of paranoid behaviour”.

Hernandez had been seen by one psychiatrist who said he was not fit to be tried, but a second report reversed that decision. He was jailed for seven years in total.