A TEENAGE burglar who searched a student’s bedroom while she was asleep has been confined to his home every night for three months.

The student woke at 11.30am on April 30 to see the 15-year-old crouched down in her room rummaging through her handbag, Sam Law, prosecuting, told York Youth Court.

As soon as he realised she was awake, he fled empty-handed.

The house raid was part of a crime spree that also included him targeting a 13-year-old cyclist walking home with a friend from school, hitting a householder, violence towards shop staff and another burglary.

Youth justices told the teenager he had come very close to being locked up in a children’s detention centre and that burgling houses would not be tolerated.

The boy, of central York, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denied burgling the student house in Water Lane, York, but was convicted at a trial.

He admitted stealing fishing gear worth £600 by burgling a greenhouse in Water Lane in February, assaulting a householder in Burtonstone Lane, stealing a music speaker from Tesco’s Clifton Moor store, a public order offence against staff at Toys R Us on Clifton Moor, all in March, handling stolen water bottles in February and assaulting the 13-year-old boy in September.

He was given a 12-month youth rehabilitation order with an intensive surveillance and supervision programme, 91 days of specified activities and a three-month nightly curfew from 8pm to 7am.

His solicitor Liam Hassan said: “Despite all the offences, it is quite clear from the (Youth Offending Team) report he is vulnerable and he needs help.”

The boy had both seen and suffered from violence in his family home, the court heard.

Mrs Law said the 15-year-old and an accomplice pushed a trolley against the bicycle the 13-year-old was wheeling, and challenged him to fight them.

Then both the attackers punched him in the head and face.

When the 13-year-old and his friend managed to flee, the attackers pursued them.

When a policewoman tried to arrest the 15-year-old, he was so violent she was forced to call for back up.

The householder assaulted in March was trying to stop the 15-year-old and his friends jumping onto hedges at the back of his house from an electricity sub-station.