A drug addict who held up shop staff with a water pistol in one of 70 robberies and burglaries has been jailed for nine years.

Paul Stewart held the 1ft-long toy to the back of an assistant's head and threatened to kill her.

In another shop robbery he told frightened assistants he had an accomplice waiting outside with a shotgun.

He ordered them to count to 1,000 and warned they would be shot if they tried to raise the alarm before then.

Stewart, 29, pleaded guilty to two robberies, a burglary and theft when he appeared at Hove Crown Court yesterday.

Richard Cherrill, prosecuting, said Stewart went into the Co-op in Old Town, Eastbourne, an hour before it closed on January 3.

The store's CCTV cameras showed him buying goods and then leaving but picked him up re-entering the store at 10pm.

Mr Cherrill said: "He threatened two members of staff with a claw hammer and took £5,700 from the safe after ordering them to hand over the keys.

"He tied them up and ordered them to count to one thousand, saying there was a man outside with a shotgun who would shoot them if they called the police.

"He smashed the CCTV equipment and the video cassette with the hammer before he left.

"Police were able to reconstruct the video tape and identified him as the man who had earlier entered the shop."

He said Stewart struck again two weeks later at a convenience store in the town as the female member of staff shut for the night.

The woman told police: "He was carrying something which was black and about a foot long. He said it was a gun.

"He told me to get on the ground and I felt something cold, metal and heavy at the back of my head.

"He said several times he would kill me."

After he was arrested, Stewart said although the gun was metal and not plastic it was, in fact, a child's water pistol.

The court heard Stewart, from Eastbourne but of no fixed address, had previous convictions for actual bodily harm and robbery for which he had been jailed for a total of six years.

He had been released on licence and still had 18 months of the sentence remaining when the robberies were committed.

He asked for a string of more than 70 offences of robbery, burglary and deception to be taken into consideration.

The court heard Stewart had a £1,000-a-day addiction to crack cocaine, heroin and Valium.

Robert Hall, defending, said Stewart had developed a drug problem after being devastated by the death of his long-term partner from cancer in December last year.