A man caused more than £10,000 of damage to Tesco Express, in Lawson Place, Bury St Edmunds, when he rammed his mother's car into the store, a court heard.
Peter Sissons, 31, of Coltsfoot Crescent, Bury, avoided a jail sentence at Ipswich Crown Court on Tuesday.
At an earlier hearing, Judge John Holt warned him that it was his last chance to avoid a custodial sentence and gave him six months to sort out his life before being sentenced. As a result, Sissons had been undergoing rehabilitation to help address his problems.
Judge Holt ordered Sissons to remain under Probation Service supervision for the next 12 months and to complete 150 hours of unpaid community work. Sissons was also disqualified from driving for three years.
The court heard how, on January 5, Sissons had been drinking heavily before driving off in his mother's car from the family home, in Coltsfoot Crescent.
Sissons, who suffered from depression and at times drank to excess, had previously walked into his mother's bedroom at 3am and told her, 'I love you Mum no matter what'.
An hour later, Mrs Sissons found him outside in her car and managed to get him back inside, but he later got back into the car and drove off, the court heard.
Sissons, who is believed to have drunk four bottles of wine during the previous day, left a note saying: "I love you all. It's not your fault."
Sissons, who was two-and-a-half times the drink-drive limit, drove the car to Lawson Place and rammed it into the front of the Tesco Express store, the court was told.
The impact caused £10,000 of damage to the shop, which was closed at the time, £600 damage to stock and badly damaged the car.
When police arrived they found Sissons inside the store surrounded by debris and clutching an open bottle of wine.
After he was arrested Sissons, who pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, burglary, driving with excess alcohol and driving with no insurance, told officers he was unable to remember much of what had happened.
The court heard Sissons, who planned to move to Bournemouth, had been having his treatment at a centre in Lincolnshire funded by members of his family and had made sufficient progress to keep him out of prison.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to go back to our main news index. The full article contains 405 words and appears in Bury Free Press newspaper.
