A MOTHER-of-five who stole a shop worker s handbag was spared jail this week, because she has a young baby. Tracy Russell – who was identified after a CCTV picture of her appeared in the Ely Standard -- admitted that she stole the bag from the Spar shop

A MOTHER-of-five who stole a shop worker's handbag was spared jail this week, because she has a young baby.

Tracy Russell - who was identified after a CCTV picture of her appeared in the Ely Standard -- admitted that she stole the bag from the Spar shop in Ely, after noticing it sitting on a counter.

With a three-month suspended jail sentence already hanging over her, Russell had told police that the bag was "an opportunity too good to miss."

She had taken it to the New Look store nearby and gone through its contents, before abandoning it in a changing room.

Russell had seen a photograph of a baby on the mobile phone inside the bag, and "all of a sudden felt a huge sense of remorse," said solicitor Michael Judkins.

Forty-five-year-old Russell, of William Smith Close, Cambridge, admitted stealing the bag belonging to Cintia Dinis on January 21 when she appeared at Ely courthouse on Thursday.

She was given another three-month suspended sentence for the theft, and must carry out 80 hours of unpaid work. For breaching her suspended sentence order, magistrates gave her a three-month electronic tagging order, keeping her indoors between 6pm and 6am every day.