A new dad who caught a serial burglar raiding his partner’s home nabbed him in a violent struggle - while he was naked.
Lee Sullivan was sleeping when his partner woke him up after she thought she heard the baby stair gate being opened at her home in Sandford Close, Beechwood, in Middlesbrough.
Ian Ferguson, 38, was then heard raiding the couple’s baby daughter’s room.
Despite having no clothes on, Mr Sullivan got out of bed, confronted the thief and restrained him until the police arrived.
Mr Sullivan’s girlfriend Jade Benjamin said: “I was screaming and ran downstairs. I remember once he had him restrained against the door he called down and asked me to bring him some shorts to put on.”
Ferguson is now behind bars for the offence after he was jailed for nearly three years at Teesside Crown Court.
The burglary happened in June last year.
Miss Benjamin, 20, said it was midnight when she heard the stair gate being moved.
She said: “I am a really light sleeper. I heard the gate at the bottom of the stairs being moved, so I turned to Lee to wake him up. I said: ‘I think someone is in the house’. Then I heard the gate at the top of the stairs and I said to him ‘Lee there is definitely someone in the house’.
“I could hear movement in the nursery room. I was terrified. Thankfully Dahlia was in my bed. I had only got her out of her cot about half an hour before.”
Miss Benjamin said Ferguson then came into her room.
She said: “He kind of fell into the room. Lee just shot up out of bed. He had no clothes on. He grabbed him and said ‘what do you want’. I ran straight out the room with the baby - she was about seven months old at the time.
“There was some sort of confrontation between them and the guy was trying to get away. I heard Lee saying ‘I don’t think so’.
“I called the police and they came straight round.”
Miss Benjamin said the confrontation spilled into the nursery and Ferguson fell into the baby’s cot.
Mr Sullivan, 23, a factory worker from Berwick Hills, and Ferguson both suffered head cuts during the struggle.
Miss Benjamin said she was left “shocked and frightened”.
In a victim impact statement read to the court she said: “I am very frightened for the safety of my baby. I was on the phone to the police and I threw up. I also threw up a second time when the police arrived.”
Ferguson had 62 previous convictions for 152 offences including burglary and robbery and he had served four jail sentences including a four year term.
Robert Mochrie, defending, said that Ferguson knew that he must expect an immediate and lengthy prison sentence because of his criminal record.
The judge Recorder Jonathan Adkin told him: “You have a truly dreadful list of antecedents committed since 1990.
“This is your sixth dwelling house burglary and it is apparent that you don’t seem to care whose home you target whether it be the elderly or a couple with a one year old baby.”
Ferguson, of Passfield Crescent, South Bank, was jailed for 876 days, equal to a three year sentence less 20% for a guilty plea, after he admitted burglary.
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