VIDEO: Carer avoids jail after being caught on CCTV stealing from war veteran

Pell (65) was caught on camera stealing money from Peter Carpenter (89), who survived a shipwreck when Germans torpedoed his vessel, is now frail and uses a walking frame to get around his Spalding bungalow.

Widower Peter has an aneurysm of the aorta – a bulging section of the body’s main artery – and describes himself as “a ticking time bomb” because it is inoperable and will one day claim his life.

Pell, of Church Street, Pinchbeck, pleaded guilty at Boston Magistrates’ Court to stealing a total of £50 from the war veteran, £20 and £30 on two respective occasions, on 1 and 4 November.

She was sentenced to a year-long community order and ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid community work as well as paying £50 compensation to Peter and a total of £170 in costs and charges.

The war hero says he would have given Pell £20 if she had told him she was short of money.

But he said he doesn’t believe Pell needed to steal from him and said that she should have received a custodial sentence for taking the money.

He said: “A couple of months in the nick would have done her good. If they gave her two months she would only have done a month.”

Peter joined the Merchant Navy in 1943 aged 15, and was on ships in the perilous Arctic Convoys and supporting the Allied landings in Normandy.

He was also one of only 12 survivors when his ship was torpedoed and he literally swam for his life.