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A chilling video has been released showing a hooded burglar creeping around a pensioner as she sleeps in a chair.

Patrick Reid, 51, is currently serving a jail sentence after he burgled Margaret Woodward’s home four times in the space of a year.

During one of the robberies, the thief got more than he bargained for when the 68-year-old woke up as he unzipped a bag and chased him out of her house threatening to ‘break his kneecaps’.

The footage was captured on secret cameras installed by police when they saw the OAP was being repeatedly targeted.


The video emerged this week after Ms Woodward was awarded £1,500 by Derbyshire’s high sheriff, Derek Mapp, at a ceremony to honour her bravery.



Judge Jonathan Gosling, who sentenced Reid in June to four years and eight months in jail, was also at the event.

He said: ‘Some of us may have been unlucky in the past to have been burgled more than once.

‘But I expect none of us have experienced what Margaret has had to. She was burgled by the same man no less than five times.

Patrick Reid is captured in Margaret Woodward’s house in Derbyshire (Picture: Caters)

‘In the footage Reid walks right up to her chair, satisfies himself that she is asleep, steps around the chair and then looks in her mobility scooter.

‘Suddenly she wakes up to find him at arm’s length away. Does she scream for help?

‘No. Margaret, who cannot move easily at speed, gets up quickly from her chair and, stick aloft, chased him from her home.’

Detective Constable Gill Richardson, from Derbyshire Police, said the CCTV footage was ‘shocking’.

‘It is chilling to watch,’ she said.

‘It’s particularly shocking how brazen Reid is in it, being just inches away from Margaret.

‘It’s something that just gets more shocking the more times you see it.’

Reid escaped through the bedroom window of the flat in Long Eaton but his face was caught on film. He was caught minutes after the last burglary cycling along a nearby street.

Arthritis sufferer Ms Woodward said: ‘The fact that someone was touching me while I slept and I didn’t know, made me feel like I didn’t want to live any more.

‘I felt like it wasn’t my home any more, it was his home.’

Over the year of burglaries a total of £900 was stolen from her home.