A serial ram raider has been jailed for demolishing a Co-op shop in a bungled attempt to steal its cash machine.

Career criminal Dylan Taylor was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in his absence after breaking an electronically monitored curfew, jumping bail, and fleeing to Thailand.

His attack on the Co-op shop at the Trago Mills complex at Newton Abbot did £140,000 damage when he drove a Mitsubishi Shogun through the front window so violently that he brought the roof crashing around his ears.

Serial ram raider Taylor was caught because he made a series of errors before fleeing empty-handed. He left the Shogun buried in the rubble and cut himself as he tried to smash open the cash box, leaving his blood on it.

Police had no trouble identifying him from his DNA because he has three previous convictions for ram raiding and had only been out of prison for two weeks.

He had bought the Mitsubishi for £895 cash just hours before the raid and was identified by the seller.

Taylor, aged 43, of Lichfield Avenue, Torquay, denied but was found guilty of burglary and jailed for seven years and six months by Recorder Hannah Willcocks at Exeter Crown Court.

She issued a warrant for his arrest after being told that he went missing on Wednesday and his phone has been traced to Thailand.

She said: ‘The photographs show the devastation to the building. The ceiling collapsed and it was effectively destroyed with £100,000 damage and £40,000 loss of business while it was repaired.

‘There was clearly great harm and economic loss. This was a highly planned, premeditated and professionally executed burglary by a professional and repeat ram raid burglar.’

A trial in May heard how Taylor was the only one of four intruders to be caught and was traced by his DNA. He had only just been released from a four-and-a-half-year sentence for an identical ram raid at the Bridgetown Post Office in Totnes on Christmas Day 2012.

 Mr Charles Cochand, defending, apologised for his client having jumped bail. He said Taylor committed the ram raid at a time when he was in emotional turmoil because of the death of his father.

He said the other three people who took part in the raid had not been caught, the public had not been put at danger, and nobody had been hurt in the raid.