A man accused of stealing almost £12,000 worth of goods from a Fane Valley Stores is to face trial later this year.
Kieran Milnes, with an address of Beechill Park South in Belfast, denied eight counts of theft; with values of each alleged theft ranging from £208 to £3,144.45 (a total of £11,874.85), on dates between August 8, 2022 and September 13 of the same year.
Appearing for arraignment in Craigavon Crown Court on Tuesday – the day of his 48th birthday – Milnes pleaded “not guilty” to all the charges against him.
During the brief hearing Milnes’s defence barrister told the court that an investigation was undertaken by the employer and the materials were then handed over to police which subsequently led to his client’s arrest.
The defence raised questions of a deficiency in the audit trails, in that not all the documents sifted through by the company during their investigation had been provided to the defence.
He further raised issue with having only six of eight video clips submitted as evidence.
However, prosecuting, Joseph Murphy told the court that the two remaining CCTV clips will be served in due course.
“The video clips are all pretty much identical, save for one,” explained Mr Murphy.
“They’re compilations essentially of the defendant loading the goods from the warehouse and loading them into the van using the forklift, which is parked in front of his car for a short period of time.
“It’s obviously the prosecution case that that is him unloading the goods, essentially stealing them, putting them in his own car.”
He added: “The defence’s case seems to be straightforward, and that the defendant is saying [in a first police interview] that whenever he arrived in the morning to pick up the goods…there would be either, an additional, or updated delivery docket – that there were additional orders made overnight, and he would have to go and retrieve those.
“Then in the second [police interview] he said he would receive verbal instructions from sale representatives to add orders and essentially, he was doing this all legitimately; these were legitimate orders that simply aren’t perfected, or reflected in the paper trails, produced by the company.”
Mr Murphy confirmed that the case, which is scheduled for the latter half of October, should take between three and five days, as things stand.
Milnes was released to re-appear before Craigavon Crown at an agreed date in October.
