A TRAINEE soldier has been fined nearly £500 for vandalising a bus ticket machine and trying to use a forged £20 note in Devizes.

The 16-year-old youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is originally from Devizes but is currently more than half-way through a 20-week Army training course in Hertfordshire.

He appeared before Kennet magistrates in Devizes last Thursday to plead guilty to charges of forgery and criminal damage.

Anna Humphreys, prosecuting, told the court that the youth had tried to buy cigarettes from the One Stop shop in Eastleigh Road, Devizes, on January 13, offering a £20 note in payment.

But the staff were suspicious of the poor forgery and called the police.

When interviewed, the youth admitted the notes he had were forgeries, created by a friend who scanned a £20 note on his computer.

When arrested, he had another forged note in his wallet.

On March 30, when the youth was on leave for Easter, he was among a group of youngsters who got onto an unattended First Badgerline bus parked in Station Road carpark in Devizes.

He tried to wrench the bus's ticket machine off its moorings, but residents heard the noise and called the police, who arrested him.

Stephen Clifford, defending, told the court that the youth had made poor decisions about his choice of friends.

The same person who had made the forged notes encouraged him to damage the ticket machine.

Mr Clifford said: "He knows that if he repeats this behaviour he will be throwing away a career in the Army."

As well as giving the youth fines of nearly £500, magistrates ordered the forged notes to be destroyed.