Jean Walsh, a have-a-go-hero managed to defend her home when an intruder broke in.
The 73-yr-old has 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and was on her own with the family dog when she heard a noise upstairs when she was reading the newspaper in her Victorian House Kitchen in Stockton.
Initially, Jean thought it was her husband home from a fishing trip he had been on here in Ireland, but suddenly the lady was confronted by the intruder after she shouted upstairs to see who it was.
What happens next is astonishing. Jean tried to set her Collie dog on him, but the lovely little pet just licked him – Jean then took matters into her own hands by pushing the man up against the wall and told him to get out of her home.
She said:
“I saw a lad coming down the stairs with a torch. I said ’hey who are you and what are you doing up there?’, he never said anything and carried on down the stairs. He was face-to-face with me, I said ’is there anyone else up there with you?’ and he just mumbled. Pure instinct took over and I grabbed him and put him up against the wall. He told me there was another couple of people up there. I thought, ’Oh God, I can handle one’ but I had visions of more of them coming down stairs with knives and screwdrivers. I said ’get out of my house now’ but he said ’No, I’m going in that room now’.
Jean then ran into her kitchen and, keeping her foot on the door to stop it from being opened, she rang the police and her son who lives nearby.
Within just seconds she heard more voices and feared it was the burglar’s friends, but it was the police who were already in the street looking for the thief.
Defiantly, Jean said she was happy to stay in the house that night. “I said I was fine, the threat had been removed,” she said.