A 62-YEAR-OLD man caught a burglar in his York home and held him in a headlock until police arrived.

The man, who has had a heart bypass and suffers from diabetes, and his 60-year-old disabled wife found the intruder in their kitchen doorway, while their 15-year-old grand-daughter was downstairs, and managed to stop him getting away.

“I asked ‘what are you doing?’ and he said: ‘I’m looking for somebody,’ or something stupid like that,” said the Tang Hall householder, who does not wish to be identified.“He ran to a sitting room window to get out through it and knocked me over. But my wife grabbed him by the collar and I was able to recover enough to grab him as he was near the window.

“I then got him in a headlock and held him tightly until police arrived. He was saying: ‘Let me go!’ but I wasn’t letting go. My granddaughter, who was staying with us and had been asleep in the sitting room, was screaming and standing on the sofa but then I told her to ring 999 and call the police.

“It seemed like an age before they arrived and handcuffed him, although it wasn’t really that long.

“Don’t make me out to be some kind of superman – the adrenaline just kicks in.”

His wife, who has a disability which means she can barely walk further than the garden gate, said she thought about going to the kitchen to grab a rolling pin to help her husband.

The couple said the break-in happened on Saturday morning when they had been asleep in their bedroom and were woken by a noise.

They said they were both bruised after being kicked during the incident, and had been to York Hospital for a check-up later in the weekend, but doctors said they had not suffered any serious injury.

However, they said they and their grand-daughter were still traumatised by their experiences.

•A 34-year-old man and a 17 year-old youth, both from York, have appeared before York Magistrates, each charged with two burglaries, and have been remanded in custody.