Woman watched masked burglar as she rang the police

When officers arrived, Steven Whittaker, who had put a chair by the garden fence to help him climb over, tried to flee but was brought to the ground and arrested.

And at Warwick Crown Court Whittaker, 42, of Guys Cliffe Avenue, Leamington, pleaded guilty to the burglary and was jailed for just under two years and five months.

Prosecutor Kathryn Roughton said that the woman and her daughter were asleep at their home in Cliffe Road when she was woken at 3am on June 17 by a door banging.

But after listening out for a short while and hearing nothing else, she assumed it had just been a door banging in the wind, and went back to sleep. But at 4.45am, she was woken again, and this time heard noises coming from the conservatory and an adjoining playroom.

So she got up and went to the top of the stairs, where a window overlooks the conservatory, and saw a man wearing a balaclava hood carrying things out through the conservatory. The woman returned to her bedroom, and as she called the police she continued to watch the intruder as he made more trips inside to get more of her and her daughter’s property.

The burglar ran when he heard the polcie arrive, but officers gave chase, and when they pulled him to the ground and arrested him, he immediately told them he had left the laptop and the wii console in the garden. And Whittaker, who had a screwdriver and a torch on him, said: “It’s been a while since I’ve done this. I’ve been clean for seven years, but I’ve messed up, haven’t I?”

He explained he was being intimidated by people to whom he owed money, so had gone out that night intending to carry out a burglary so he could repay them.

Colin Charvill, defending, asked for Whittaker to be given the maximum 20 per cent discount from the three-year minimum sentence he was facing as credit for his early guilty plea.

Recorder Michael Burrows QC jailed Whittaker for 876 days, just under two years and five months and was a 20 per cent discount from a three-year sentence.