A man has been jailed for more than nine years after a couple were terrorised in their home by a gang of machete-wielding burglars.

Ashley Robinson, 22, was one of five masked men who broke into the victims’ bungalow in Whitley, near Selby, while they were asleep on the ground floor, York Crown Court heard.

The victims were woken by the sound of loud “quarrelling” from inside the bungalow, said prosecutor Jade Bucklow.

“(The male victim) got out of bed and opened the bedroom door to find himself confronted by a male wearing face coverings and his hood pulled up, holding a machete,” she added.

Robinson wasn’t the man wielding the large knife during the raid, which happened at about 11.40am, after the gang had broken in by using a brick to smash through the kitchen door.

The male victim “tried to force the bedroom door shut while shouting for his girlfriend to call police”, the court heard.

The machete-wielding raider pushed the door with such force that it broke off its hinges and the couple ran out the rear door of the bedroom, said Ms Bucklow.

The male resident grabbed a shovel and “patrolled around” the property and saw two men, one of them carrying his partner’s Louis Vuitton handbag, emerging from the back door.

The armed intruders ran out of the bungalow with bags of stolen items including a diamond-encrusted gold ring worth over £10,000.

The raiders ran to a grey Saab getaway car.

CCTV showed Robinson, wearing a hooded top and a black face mask, running out of the property wearing one of the stolen items, a Moncler designer jacket.

The male victim ran over to the Saab and tried to strike the windscreen with the shovel but only managed to hit the bonnet because the car was “already in motion”.

A woman who was driving nearby saw the getaway vehicle “screech past her at speed” and she had to swerve off the road to avoid an accident. She followed the vehicle down the A19, all the way to Kirk Sandall on the outskirts of Doncaster, where the getaway car suddenly turned into a housing estate.

As the woman pulled into a layby, she saw two men - Robinson and his 22-year-old cohort Robert Davies - running from the vehicle. She followed them into a Costcutter shop where she took a photo of them, the court heard. They were also captured on the shop’s CCTV.

Davies, of Lakeside View, Askern, near Doncaster, was identified from these images as he was already known to police as being part of an organised crime group.

Two weeks later, he was arrested at his home where police found some of the stolen items and £310 stolen cash. He was later charged with aggravated burglary, admitted the offence and was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in August 2022.

One of the items found in his home, the Moncler designer coat, had Robinson’s DNA on it and he was also identified on the CCTV footage.

Robinson was arrested and interviewed in September 2022 but initially denied aggravated burglary. He was due to appear for trial in January this year but failed to turn up. He was re-arrested and ultimately admitted the offence in February.

In the meantime, while out on bail, he committed another burglary in Leeds.

He admitted those offences and appeared for sentence for all matters on Friday, March 8.

In a statement read out in court, the victims of the Selby burglary said they had suffered acute anxiety since their horrific ordeal and struggled to sleep. They were now “scared to stay home alone”.

Defence barrister Harry Crowson said that father-to-be Robinson was an “intelligent young man” from a “very good” family but had got in with the wrong crowd as a youth which caused him to “splinter off from his family”.

Judge Deborah Sherwin said the burglary in Selby was a “violent and no doubt terrifying event”.

“A violent incident like this leaves deep scars,” she added.

Robinson, of Blackpool View, Farnley, Leeds, was jailed for nine-and-a-half years for all three offences.