A warehouse worker has admitted to stealing electrical goods worth $2,499 from his employer, claiming that he needed the money to support his four children.

Andre Russell, 37, was fired from his job at facilities management firm Air Care after CCTV footage showed him taking a blower and a condenser on the evening of June 8.

After an order to a private residence was postponed, the units had been left in the company’s Serpentine Road warehouse,

Upon arriving at the premises on the morning of June 9, general manager Brendan Stones discovered that both items had vanished overnight.

CCTV footage was then reviewed, showing Russell entering the warehouse at 8.37pm the previous day and leaving with the blower and the condenser in an Air Care van, whose GPS tracking device was also studied.

When confronted, the Devonshire resident insisted he had moved the items to the company’s Mill Creek warehouse.

He and Mr Stones then visited this location, at which point Russell pointed to different stock and professed them to be the missing units.

After being fired and arrested, the defendant continued telling police that the items were in the Mill Creek warehouse.

He later admitted to the theft, initially saying that he had sold the condenser for $400, before finally returning both items.

In Magistrates’ Court this morning, defence lawyer Peter Farge said that his client, who had no previous convictions, committed the theft as he was struggling to provide for his four children.

He added that daycare costs alone for the youngsters, aged 3 to 10, totalled $800 per week.

However, magistrate Archibald Warner dismissed the suggestion that this constituted a mitigating circumstance.

“There are a lot of people who have four children and are struggling, but they don’t steal,” he said.

Mr Warner ordered a Social Inquiry Report on Russell, who will return to court for sentencing on December 9.

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