A MANAGER of a store in Wrexham has described her horror of arriving to work to see her shop windows had been smashed in on St David’s Day.

Paul James Foulkes who went on an early morning rampage of damage in Wrexham town centre was jailed for a total of 42 weeks after admitted 14 charges of criminal damage.

The value of the damage was estimated to be more than £10,000 in an act which was described as a cry for help.

One of the properties that fell victim to the incident was Vision Express on Hope Street, and manager of the shop, Sadie Rodenhurst, has described her shock as she discovered what had happened.

“I received a phone call at around twenty to eight in the morning from North Wales Police who told me that the windows of the shop had been damaged, and the first thing I thought to myself was why would someone do that?

“I went straight over to see the damage for myself and I was just appalled, I was shocked, I couldn’t believe what had happened.

“In total, four of the windows had been damaged, and one of them had been pushed right the way through as well.

“It left the shop in an unsafe condition which meant we had to close it until three o’clock in the afternoon, which of course meant we lost money because of it.

“To be honest, I felt more sorry for the customers who were scheduled to have appointments that day.

“We were scheduled to have a set of appointments for people so that we could refer them to optometry specialists.

“However, because we were forced to close, we had to ring and cancel all of those patients and it might be weeks before those appointments can be rescheduled, which means there are patients who are missing out as well.

“I was shocked, I was angry, I was horrified about the entire situation, but it was the customer impact that was really the greatest shame of it all.”

The town centre damage all happened in the early morning of Friday, March, 1 on Queen Street, Duke Street and Hope Street.

Mr Foulkes was on bail at the time, but his actions put him in breach of his criminal behaviour order and the court also took into account his previous convictions.

The court heard how that Friday morning, at about 5am, he kicked windows at Vision Express, The Talbot public house, Gerrards Bakery, The Queen's Square Salon, Just Cuts, Superdrug, Bon Marche, The Santander Bank, That's Entertainment, Beresford Adams, The Enterprise Hub, Hayes Travel and The Chinese Buffet.