A ‘confused’ burglar watched a woman sleep after breaking into her home in a terrifying ordeal which has been compared to horror movie ‘The Shining’.
Homeless Simon Bailey, 47, snuck into his victim’s home in broad daylight, believing that his former colleague and friend – who previously owned the address – was tied up upstairs.
Instead, the ‘terrified’ mother, who had been lying on the sofa due to illness, woke up to her dogs barking and found Bailey looming over her, Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard.
The victim, who worked with schizophrenic people, knew Bailey had taken drugs due to a ‘terrifying’ look in his eye, but managed to keep calm and get him out of the house before her children came home.
In her victim impact statement, she told the court how she managed to encourage him into her porch before slamming the door and locking him out, to which he began shouting angrily ‘let me f***ing in’ and calling her a ‘b***h*’.
Prosecutor Omar Majid said the victim called 999 and asked for Bailey’s full name, which he gave under the belief she was on the phone to a friend. She heard banging noises outside, the gate was bolted and locked, but Bailey jumped over it into her back garden and was looking at her through the kitchen window and was trying the back door.
Bailey then started kicking the patio doors and eventually smashed his way through before heading upstairs. The victim locked one of her dogs in its cage and grabbed her other before hiding under her kitchen table and whispered information to the call handler.
She said she heard Bailey banging around upstairs before telling him ‘Please don’t hurt me, I’m a mother’. The court heard Bailey didn’t harm his victim physically, and she managed to lock herself in the upstairs bathroom, before eventually returning downstairs and fleeing to her neighbours home – but was followed by Bailey.
Staffordshire Police officers arrived at the address 20 minutes later, and found 47-year-old Bailey sitting on a wall looking extremely agitated and paranoid on arrival.
Believing him to be on drugs, they placed him in the back of a police car and took him in for questioning. When interviewed, Bailey told them he believed a friend of his was tied up in the house.
The court heard Bailey had been released on licence before the incident and he has 45 prior convictions starting in 1999 for 109 offences, including aggravated bodily harm, affray, possession of a blade in public, and criminal damage.
Scott Ashdown, mitigating, said: ‘In a state where he was no longer taking prescription drugs and as a symptom of withdrawal, he believed his friend was tied up in this house upstairs.
‘He wasn’t targeting the victim, you could say he was targeting the address. He wasn’t thinking of hurting her, his mind was somewhere else. He had no sinister intentions to the individual. His actions were impulsive and without any real rational thought.’
Bailey, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to burglary. Judge Michael Maher sentenced Bailey to three years in prison. He will be on licence once he is released.
He told the defendant: ‘This is a very unusual case for a burglary. In his unhinged state believed his friend was tied up upstairs and you believed you had a motorbike on the driveway. Thankfully none of the victim’s three children were present. She woke to find you at the foot of her sofa – that must be every household’s nightmare.
‘She demonstrated tremendous courage. I’ve listened to that 999 call and she was fearful. You were shouting to let you in and when she wouldn’t, you were banging on the door and kicking the patio doors, and when that didn’t work you smashed the patio doors using a garden ornament. Her entreaties to you fell on deaf ears. You ripped the bedroom door off its hinges, it must’ve felt like she was in The Shining.
‘She fled the house to a neighbour and still you followed her to that address. She said it only lasted around 12 minutes but it must’ve felt like a lifetime. She felt as though the incident would never end, you were ranting about killing people and about people being tied up. You were volatile and unpredictable.
‘The victim has had to lie to her own children about why there was such extensive damage so they don’t feel unsafe in their home environment. She has had to spend money on security, which is estimated at thousands of pounds.
‘You targeted a vulnerable victim because you knew she was alone, had been asleep on the sofa, and in an unhinged state believed a friend tied up somewhere in property. The events in your younger life are a catalyst for your damaged life and addictions to addictive substances, but that is no justification for what you did.’
Bailey was also made the subject of a restraining order.
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