A ROBBER who struck at an off-licence wearing a rubber joke mask of former US President Ronald Reagan has been jailed for three years.

Andrew Archbold was also ordered to serve an additional 132 days as at the time of the raid he was on early release licence from another sentence.

He denied the robbery in which two staff were terrorised but was convicted by a jury at an earlier hearing.

Sentencing him, Judge Merfyn Hughes QC said Archbold went into the Drinks Cabin in Great Sutton at 8.45pm one Saturday in January to get money for drugs.

The two women employees on duty locked themselves in a storeroom as he ransacked both tills and then fled with £160 in cash.

Mold Crown Court heard Archbold was carrying a file or screwdriver in his hand, had a woollen hat on his head, and was wearing the joke mask.

But as he fled the shop he left his hat behind a vital clue, for when Archbold claimed to police they had the wrong man, a DNA test on a hair strand from the hat proved it was his.

Archbold, 27, of Thornley Avenue, Eastham but who had been living at the Linden Bank Bail Hostel at Sandbach, then admitted the crime but argued it had been a theft not a robbery.

Jury members unanimously convicted him of the robbery charge.