Britain's first hoverboard shoplifter has been spared jail for gliding out of a supermarket with a crate of stolen Lucozade.

Omaree Lindsay, 19, of Cecil Road, Croydon, was sentenced to community service yesterday for the brazen theft from a Co-op store in Mitcham.

He was arrested earlier this month after police released CCTV footage of him calmly cruising into the Streatham Road shop on the gadget, kitted out with blue flashing lights.

The video showed Lindsay, clad in a grey hoodie, snatching a 20-pack of the soft drink on September 9 before reversing down the aisle and breezing out of the door.

The teenager became the first person convicted of illegally riding a hoverboard - a self-balancing Segway that was this year's must-have Christmas gift until safety fears emerged - at Croydon Magistrates' Court on December 12.

He admitted a charge of driving a road vehicle on a footpath and stealing the Lucozade bottles, worth £15.

At a sentencing hearing before Croydon magistrates yesterday, Lindsay claimed he could not remember the theft but handed himself in to police after seeing the video in the media.

Speaking outside court following the hearing, he said he had learned of his place in legal history by reading a story online.

He told the Croydon Guardian: "It is crazy.

"I haven't got [the hoverboard] anymore. I sold it because I heard they'd been banned or something."

Lindsay was also convicted of breaching a community order, handed to him for driving offences in August, following a short trial yesterday.

He had been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work but missed three sessions at Aerodrome Primary Academy in October.

Deputy district judge Adrian Turner told him: "You really have made things harder for yourself.

"You breached the community order, committed another offence and didn't pay off the financial order.

"You are going to end up in detention at this rate. You don't deserve to be there for the offences, but you will be because of attitude.

"Your head's in the sand, isn't it?"

He sentenced Lindsay to 180 works of community service and ordered him to pay £150 costs within a week.

Amazon stopped selling hoverboards earlier this month after National Trading Standards warned thousands of the gadgets had non-compliant electrical components that could explode or catch fire.