A TENANT was so annoyed by the noise from his neighbour’s TV that he vandalised her flat and cut the cable to her set.

Victim Susan Emberton, who suffers from tinnitus, had already bought headphones to keep the noise down, but Daniel Anthony Bellamy, 26, snapped and broke in while she was at work.

He vandalised the living room then, having been ordered by magistrates to stay away from her, he cut her television cable in the attic above his flat and threw pebbles at her window.

He had also turned his own television and music system up loud and put them next to an open window at the flats in Tadcaster Road, York.

At York Crown Court, Judge Scott Wolstenholme told him: “My sympathies lie not with you but with your long-suffering neighbour. You deserve to go to prison for that.”

But because Bellamy had spent the equivalent of an eight-month jail sentence behind bars on remand, and as a first-time burglar the maximum jail term he could receive was 12 months, he gave him a community order with six months’ supervision.

Matthew Donkin, prosecuting, told the court that Ms Emberton had responded to Bellamy’s initial complaint by buying wireless headphones so she could watch television without having it on loud.

Mr Donkin said Bellamy’s actions had left Ms Emberton feeling scared and uncomfortable in her own home.

Bellamy, who has since been evicted from his flat, pleaded guilty to burglary and criminal damage.

Bellamy’s barrister, Katherine Robinson, told the court he had no job, no money and no home, but his parents were prepared to stand by him and he could go to a homeless hostel.

Last May, before the burglary on June 29, he had called police after drinking to tell them he was considering burgling a Co-op store. Bellamy had mental health and alcohol problems, the court heard, but he had now been sober for a “considerable period of time” because he had been in prison.