A shoplifter has been sentenced to five months behind bars for stealing items worth almost £700 from a supermarket in Northern Ireland last month.

Sylvia Eastwood, 31, of Cremorne Gardens, Epsom, was sentenced yesterday for stealing from Sainsbury's on February 20.

Eastwood, who had admitted to the theft, was jailed and ordered to pay a £25 offender levy at Lisburn Magistrates’ Court.

A second charge of coming equipped to steal from the Lisburn store with four Sainsbury’s reusable ‘bags for life’ had been withdrawn.

During the trial the BBC reported prosecutors as saying Eastwood claimed a man she met near a Dublin prison told her to target Sainsbury’s.

Counsel for the prosecution said: "She said he threatened her if she didn't steal for him."

Her defence lawyer said she travelled to Ireland to attend a funeral.

Eastwood and another woman, who has not been traced, allegedly loaded a large quantity of clothes into a trolley during the shoplifting raid.