A judge today adjourned sentencing of a 32-year-old supermarket worker who has admitted kidnapping a 12-year-old girl he met in an internet chatroom.

Richard Wait exchanged e-mails for a week with the girl before picking her up in his van and taking her for a ride round the south coast on November 6 last year.

Wait, from Loxwood, near Billingshurst, pleaded guilty to child abduction last month.

Today at Winchester Crown Court, Richard Bryan, prosecuting, asked for the sentence to be adjourned because there was a linked matter to be resolved at magistrates' court.

Judge Patrick Hooton adjourned the case for sentencing on a date to be fixed in May.

An earlier hearing had been told that since being charged Wait, who was a delivery van driver at the time of the offence and now works for a supermarket, had attempted suicide and that his wife had left him.

Wait had met the girl via internet chat before meeting her in person at Liss railway station in Hampshire.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, left a note to her family saying she was going shopping before she met Wait, who had not told her his real age.

He then drove her around in his van for five-and-a-half hours as her frantic parents called the police.

He eventually dropped her back in Liss, unharmed but upset.