Pensioner battered with butt of weapon

AN ARMED thug who battered a pensioner with the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun has been jailed for eight years.

Karl Hill, 44, from Dewsbury, struck 65-year-old Daniel Barr repeatedly with the imitation weapon after bursting into the victim’s home in Whitby.

Mr Barr was almost knocked unconscious by ferocious blows to the head and thought he was going to die.

He had been making a sandwich in his kitchen when Hill and his sidekick Dean Firth, 46, appeared in his living room, one of them wearing a balaclava.

The victim was thrown back into the kitchen at gunpoint where Hill, who pressed the butt of the gun to the pensioner’s chin, gave him a “thorough beating” with the single-barrel weapon, landing blows to his head, back and chest, and punching him repeatedly as he demanded Mr Barr reveal where he kept his cash.

The blood-soaked victim was drifting in and out of consciousness as he was dragged upstairs and dumped on his bedroom floor while the raiders rifled through drawers and grabbed some Scottish notes, bank cards and an Omega watch. They then ran outside, where 77-year-old Alan Bendelow, also from Dewsbury, was waiting in a people-carrier to drive the burglars back to their home town.

A jury at York Crown Court found Bendelow, of Halifax Road, not guilty of the charges after he claimed he had no idea what Hill and Firth were up to, and had merely driven them to Whitby.

Firth, of Green Close, Dewsbury, and Hill, of Halifax Road, admitted the offences and appeared for sentence via video link. Hill was jailed for eight year and Firth six-and-a-half.