A thief has been ordered to pay compensation to an Aberdeen store after destroying nearly £1,000 worth of clothes – by stealing their worthless buttons.
Adam Nelson crept around TK Maxx in the Kittybrewster area of the city snipping off labels and buttons from designer tops.
And when he was caught he said he “thought it was a good idea at the time” as the buttons would look good on a shirt he was trying to tailor himself.
Yesterday the 30-year-old appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and admitted stealing from the store on November 22.
Fiscal depute Jamie Dunbar said that value of the buttons and labels he had taken were considered to be of a “nominal value”.
However, he said as a result of Nelson’s alterations to the garments TK Maxx was left with around £900 worth of destroyed goods.
Mr Dunbar said that the store was unable to sell the items once they had been tampered with.
Sheriff Donald Ferguson asked Nelson if he had a solicitor to represent him in court or if he wanted to represent himself.
He replied: “Why not? You only live once.”
The sheriff then asked him to explain why he had committed the offence.
Nelson said although he thought it was a good idea at the time, he now realised that it may not have been.
Laughing from the dock, he said: “I clearly thought it was a good idea and clearly it wasn’t.”
The sheriff said this did not give the court any information about the motive behind the crime and asked Nelson what he wanted the buttons for.
Nelson told the court that he had been in the store and had spotted a number of buttons which took his fancy.
He said he then decided to cut them off to use on a shirt he was making for himself.
He said: “One or two of the buttons suited the design I was creating. Clearly it would have been easier to just buy the buttons.”
Sheriff Ferguson ordered Nelson to pay £600 in compensation to the store for the damage he had caused.