AN ELDERLY widow was shaken awake in the middle of the night by a burglar - armed with a mop bucket and a brush.

A court heard yesterday that the intruder, an army deserter, had broken into the wrong house apparently searching for his wife and another man.

Craig McGunigall repeatedly banged the elderly woman's head on her pillow and punched the terrified woman shouting: "lay down and stay down".

"He was carrying a mop and brush from her rear yard and while also holding a mop bucket hit her. Water from the bucket splashed onto her and her bed," said Miss Martine Snowdon, prosecuting.

He went into other rooms but returned three times and again pushed her head down and punched her.

She heard him shouting: "Where are they? On the third occasion he broke down in tears and told her his girlfriend had packed him in.

The 70-year-old bravely told him: "calm down, it's about time you went home" and walked by him. She went downstairs and unlocked her front door.

"As she escaped from the house she heard a loud thud and she saw him lying at the foot of the stairs having fallen down them."

The police alerted by the next door neighbour, who had heard banging and McGunigall shouting, found him lying on the floor bleeding from a gashed head.

At Arrowe Park Hospital he became violent and abusive and discharged himself at 9pm the same evening. As two police officers were escorting him across the car park to their vehicle he broke free from one of them and escaped.

He was tracked down and re-arrested-nearby. Interviewed the next day, he admitted being absent without leave from the Army and said he had no recollection of the incident as he had been drinking heavily.

McGunigall, 21, of St Oswalds Mews, Beechwood, Birkenhead, Wirral, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to burglary, common assault and escape on September 19 last year.

Jailing him for five years, Judge Charles James told McGunigall that he had fled from the two police officers as his mother had told him that he would be going to jail for years - "and she was right."..SUPL: