The balaclava clad thugs threatened the victim with a machete in a ‘case of mistaken identity’
Sean Slattery, of Wardgate Avenue, aged 30(Image: Merseyside Police)
A gang of balaclava clad “hoodlums” smashed their way into an innocent woman’s home armed with a machete and demanded “where’s the b**ch?”. The terrified victim was forced to lock herself inside her own bathroom as a team of four burglars ransacked her house.
Sean Slattery was later identified as being one of the culprits, having left a trail of blood strewn around the address. His criminal associates however remain at large, having apparently raided the wrong property while searching for drugs and money in a “case of mistaken identity”.
Liverpool Crown Court heard yesterday, Tuesday, that Slattery, “together with three or four unknown” offenders targeted the house on Lewisham Road in Norris Green shortly before 9.30pm on February 29 last year. On this evening, a 60-year-old woman, whom the ECHO has chosen not to name, arrived home from work and was upstairs when she “heard two loud bangs at the back of the house”.
Peter Hussey, prosecuting, described how she initially began walking down the stairs “thinking that something had fallen to the floor”. But she was then “horrified to see someone outside” while attempting to smash their way in via the patio door.
Having been left “terrified”, she fled back upstairs into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. When she thereafter “heard more loud bangs” coming from downstairs, she then “realised that there was more than one person involved”.
The woman was ultimately forced to cower helplessly as her home, where she lives alone, was “smashed up and ransacked”. One of the intruders subsequently began kicking at the bathroom door, forcing it open.
At this stage, she was then confronted by a man, dressed all in black, wearing a balaclava and brandishing a large machete while shouting: “Where is it? You know where it is. Where’s the b****? You know where the b**** is. You’ve been around it.”
Mr Hussey said of these demands: “What it meant, she did not know. She was so scared that she urinated herself.”
The woman then heard noises coming from the loft above her bathroom as one of the burglars apparently continued the search within her attic. A second man, who was “similarly clad”, meanwhile entered her hiding place and shouted: “Just tell us where it is.”
However, the gang were said to have become “frustrated” by their fruitless efforts before one said “lets go, there’s nothing here”. Having eventually left, a large police presence descended on the scene following a 999 call from a neighbour.
Officers thereafter searched the area and found a handbag and umbrella belonging to the complainant in a nearby garden alongside a machete in a sheath. “Blood smears” were meanwhile left throughout the house, with swabs taken from a radiator on the landing and the corner of the loft hatch matching Slattery’s DNA.
Having been arrested on March 24, a black latex glove and a balaclava were seized from his bedside drawer. It was also discovered that the 30-year-old, of Wardgate Avenue in Croxteth, had “got rid of” the phone he had been using at the time of the break-in, which had remained “completely inactive over several hours” on the night in question.
Mr Hussey added that the burglary “appeared to be a case of mistaken identity by a gang who appeared to have got the wrong victim and the wrong house”. While CCTV footage showed four men fleeing the house and running to a car, where there was “potentially a fifth man waiting for them” as a getaway driver, none of the other offenders have been identified.
Slattery, who was not said to have been the intruder armed with the machete, has three previous convictions for eight offences between 2016 and 2024 but “nothing of this level of seriousness”. Peter Killen, defending, told the court: “This was a shocking and tremendously serious offence.
“He is supported by his family at court. It is right to say that they were shocked, stunned and, in fact, tearful when we had some discussion about the nature of what had gone on. They simply cannot recognise in this act the son or brother that they know.”
Judge Simon Medland KC said at this stage: “History does not indicate what this group of gangsters and hoodlums where looking for. Everything indicates that it was drugs. The defendant has some association with drugs. Drugs destroy people’s lives. They make people behave in truly appalling ways.”
Mr Killen then continued: “The defendant has a very limited background. I cannot say that he is a person of good character. He has some offences in 2015 and 2016, being sentenced to community orders, and then the possession of cannabis.
“He has not ever been in custody before, where he is now going to be for some time. He has already obtained a job working in the visits section, packaging up gifts which are brought for prisoners then returning them to the wings.
“There is obviously a different side to the defendant. He has plainly had some problems, long standing, and was at something of a crisis moment in his life because of the fear about his own diagnosis of Huntington’s disease, the loss of a relationship and, ultimately, the loss of his moral compass, which ended up with him being in this house.”
Slattery admitted one count of aggravated burglary. Appearing via video link to HMP Liverpool, he was jailed for six years and eight months while one woman sat with her head in her hands in the public gallery before bursting into tears.
Sentencing, Judge Medland said: “Although you do not have an extensive criminal record, you do not come to this court as man with no previous convictions. I accept that there are good sides to your character, and, in the character reference I have read, that much is apparent.
“The offending that you have committed in the recent past is related to drugs, in 2016, but, most especially, drugs in April 2024. You were then found in unlawful possession of cocaine.
“As to why you and this group of gangsters went to this poor woman’s house, no explanation has been given to that. It must be related to the drugs underworld, looking for drugs or money or both.
“You and three or four others went to that woman’s house. She was on her own. For 15 or 20 minutes, you and your hoodlum colleagues despoiled and ransacked her house. A machete was brandished at her, and she was so terrified that she lost control of her bladder. She is still terrified even today, more than a year later.
“Those who are tempted to band together with other gangsters to ransack people’s houses, supported by a weapon, to terrify women in their own homes at night can only expect the court to impose very significant sentences on them.”