A BRAVE York pensioner is to get a £200 reward for stopping a hammer-carrying raider from burgling her 90-year-old sleeping neighbour.

Professional burglar Paul Lennon Starr, 23, broke into an Acomb house at 4.30am in January, dressed in dark clothes and carrying a screwdriver and hammer in his gloved hands, Chris Smith, prosecuting, told York Crown Court sitting at Leeds.

But the householder's neighbour, who is in her 80s, was also awake, because she was checking her greenhouse and spotted his activities. She made a 999 call to police, who walked in on Starr as he entered the kitchen of the 90-year-old woman.

The burgled pensioner was sleeping upstairs throughout the drama, and had no idea he had been in the house until police told her after his arrest.

Starr, formerly of York, and now of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to burglary and was jailed for two-and-a-half years. He has previous convictions for burglary and had finished an earlier prison sentence shortly before he staged the Acomb raid.

"Luckily, she (the 90-year-old woman) wasn't woken up and did not have the trauma of finding you in her house, but anything could have happened," Judge Trevor Kent Jones told Starr.

"It all caused a lot of distress, not only to the lady of the house, but also to the one opposite who had seen what happened and called police and she is still suffering (the after effects)."

He ordered that the neighbour receive £200 from public funds for her public-spirited actions.

For Starr, Taryn Turner said her client did not use the hammer and had not injured or attempted to injure anyone with it. As soon as he saw the police, he dropped it to the floor.

His crimes were to fuel his drug habit. During his last sentence, he had been able to get drugs in prison and had used them to get him through his last sentence. On his release, he had needed to continue taking drugs, which meant he had to commit crimes to get them.

The judge said Starr could get counselling in jail.

Updated: 10:47 Wednesday, March 23, 2005