A BURGLAR who disturbed residents in two homes during a night of raiding has been jailed for five years.

Ian Bundy injured a former Army officer who had seen active service in Afghanistan, reduced his wife to tears and stole his wallet in one raid, said Rob Galley, prosecuting.

The burglar claimed there was a paedophile in the father-of-two's house, making the ex-serviceman fear that Bundy was carrying off one of his young children.

"The sense of dread I felt that moment was indescribable," said the ex-officer later.

His Army career had included active service in Afghanistan.

Shortly before, when confronted by a student in a student house nearby, Bundy had claimed: "They told me to get your pants".

Then he rode off on the student's bike.

The bike owner chased after him, knocked him off the bike and got it back, but Bundy got away with another student's laptop.

He had first burgled houses when he was 17.

Bundy, now 47, of Dale Street, off Nunnery Lane, York, pleaded guilty to two house burglaries.

"You were effectively caught red-handed," Judge Simon Hickey said as he jailed Bundy for five years at York Crown Court.

For Bundy, Ian Hudson said he had been a heroin addict for 20 years.

He had managed to stay out of trouble for 10 years but then his wife of 21 years died in January this year.

Mr Galley said the ex-officer's wife heard shuffling outside the couple's bedroom and saw Bundy looking in shortly after 5am on April 28.

She shouted at him to get out of her house and while she dialled 999, her husband went down to confront him.

During the struggle between the two men, Bundy scratched the officer's forehead.

Bundy left behind items he had moved, including a laptop, but had taken the officer's wallet.

He got away over a garden fence, but was caught in the next street by a police officer alerted by the wife's phone call and a 999 call from the student house.

Bundy had shone a bicycle light in the face of two students sleeping in different rooms, waking them.

The first student went downstairs and confronted Bundy.