A TEENAGER has told of the terrifying moment a hooded raider tried to smash his way into her student room in York.

Nicol Busby, 18, was lying on her bed in her ground floor room at City Residence in Haxby Road when she heard a banging noise.

She assumed it was nearby building work, until her window shattered and broken glass rained into her room as a man tried to break through the window.

Nicol, who is in her first year of Early Childhood Studies, said: “I saw him put his arm through to unscrew the locks from the inside but luckily the window jammed as he was trying to lift it up. I panicked at first but figured the best thing was to leave my room straight away.

“I went to my neighbour’s room and at first she didn’t believe what happened. We went and looked through my door and he made eye contact with both of us, then still tried to get in. We went and locked ourselves in my friend’s room and rang security.”

Nicol said campus security arrived within about 10 minutes, but by that time the man had disappeared without making his way into her room.

She said one of the most worrying factors about the attempted break-in was the fact her room was the only one with lights on, meaning the burglar knew she was in the room.

Nicol, who is from Otley, said: “He could see I was lying on my bed and my light was on, so everyone was concerned he might not have just been trying to steal something. That’s worrying.”

Andrew Maughan, Nicol’s father, said the break-in, at about 5.30pm on Monday last week, had “shaken Nicol quite badly”, and he hoped the university was taking the incident seriously.

He said: “Maybe he was an opportunist, but burglars don’t usually try to break in when lights are on and people are in the room. It makes me shudder to think what could have happened.

“They are all girls on the ground floor. It’s a listed building with no double glazing on the windows, they’re so easy to get through.

“It’s very concerning indeed. I’m only in Leeds and shot over straight away when Nicol rang me and had a look around.”

Sue Waller, head of campus and residential services for York St John University, said reviews into campus security were underway.

She said: “We are shocked to hear that an attempt was made to break into one of our accommodation sites. Our focus is always on supporting our students and our student services staff are currently working with the student in question to ensure that she has the support that she needs.

“She has also been offered a room move, either within City Residence accommodation or to another site. We are reviewing security at all our sites and working with the students’ union to promote better security awareness amongst students. We would like to reassure students that incidents like this are an extremely rare occurrence.”

Nicol said she had returned to her room since the break-in to find one of her two windows had been screwed shut, and she was considering the offer to move to another room in the same building.

She said: “I shouldn’t have to move to another accommodation, I’ve moved here and made friends and that’s a lot more stress, trying to do that somewhere else because of something like this.

“It’s safest to be vigilant. It could happen to anyone, even somewhere that’s supposed to be safe, like university accommodation. Everyone should feel safe, but that’s not really happened.”

North Yorkshire Police said the suspect was white and wearing a dark coloured hoody and coat with both hoods up, and urged anyone with information or who saw anything suspicious to phone North Yorkshire Police on 101 quoting reference 12180220772.