A drunken burglar was caught on camera smashing his way into a Bradford school at dead of night, a Court heard.

Lee Fleming, 30, was so inebriated after downing a bottle of drink, he said he remembered nothing about the crime.

He woke with blood on his hands after hurling a scaffolding pole at a window at Southmere Primary School, Ewart Street, Great Horton, on September 29 last year.

Unemployed Fleming, of Paternoster Lane, Great Horton, rummaged through cupboards in a classroom before making off with a camera worth £60, prosecutor John Bull told Bradford Crown Court yesterday.

Mr Bull said the school caretaker left the building locked and secure when he finished work on September 28 last year.

He lived close enough to the school to be woken at 2.10am by the alarm going off and he went to investigate to discover the premises had been broken into.

Mr Bull said the smashed window cost £275 to replace.

CCTV showed Fleming using a scaffolding pole, or a piece of wood, to smash his way into the school.

He cut himself and was identified by DNA evidence after leaving his blood on the window blind and glass.

Mr Bull said details of Fleming, who pleaded guilty to the burglary, were circulated by the police and handed himself in on October 20.

He told investigating officers he had drunk a bottle of alcohol and recalled nothing about the offence.

The stolen camera was never recovered.

Fleming was in breach of a suspended jail sentence imposed at Bradford Crown Court earlier last year for causing actual bodily harm to Robert Winter, a man in his 60s, at Braybrook Court, Manningham, Bradford, in May, 2010.

His barrister, Peter Hampton, urged the court not to send Fleming to prison.

He said the defendant’s problems stemmed from the alcohol abuse he was now tackling.

Judge Colin Burn said it was troubling that Fleming was so heavily in drink he remembered nothing about the school break-in.

He sentenced him to a 12-month community order with 100 hours of unpaid work and 60 hours on top for breach of the previous order.

Fleming was ordered to pay the school £335 compensation.