‘I nearly threw my life away by stealing a fizzy drink in riots’, says privately educated Masters student

A privately educated student told today how her life was almost ruined after stealing a 99p bottle of Lucozade during the London riots.

Rachel Sato-Banks, 27, narrowly escaped jail after taking the soft drink from a Texaco petrol station as the 2011 disorder spread through Hackney.

She had been filming rioters stealing champagne, cigarettes and sweets when she decided to snatch the drink after thinking at the time “Texaco was a big multi-national oil company, so it didn’t matter”, and later boasting on Facebook about her “daring” theft.

But more than a year later a photograph of her was circulated by the police. She said she was “embarrassed, frightened, appalled”, and decided to hand herself in.

After being arrested for commercial burglary, she was told to expect a custodial sentence. Instead, after she pleaded guilty, the judge ordered her to do 180 hours’ community service, saying he did not want to blight her future with a prison term.

Ms Sato-Banks, who is studying for a masters’ degree in documentary photography at London’s University of the Arts, said: “It was a moment of madness, and I still don’t know why I did it — I don’t even like soft drinks. Perhaps the excitement got the better of me.”

In an article for The Times, she said ending up cleaning toilets in a homeless shelter as punishment was “a watershed moment in a life that was, at that point, heading emphatically in the wrong direction”.

Ms Sato-Banks, who is currently living in Amsterdam, worked at an Oxfam shop in Dalston and the Whitechapel Mission, a homeless charity.

She said: “I thought about my mother who had worked hard as a single parent to fund my private education and university degree and given me every possible chance in life, and of my wonderful friends who had always been such a source of strength and support. I felt like I had truly let everyone down, not least myself.”

“The view I got of the community made me see my offence in its true context. I realise that with a single act of stupidity I took for granted everything that I was lucky to have, almost throwing away my future for the price of a soft drink.”