'Where's the safe': Terrifying ordeal for Shropshire mother and daughter as burglars smash their way into the wrong house
A mother and daughter were left terrified when burglars smashed their way into their Shropshire village home demanding a safe - having targeted the wrong property.
Callous raiders Gary Milner and Ronan Hutchinson believed they were targeting a house used to sell drugs - but instead botched their intended victims.
The pair instead smashed their way into the house of an unsuspecting, and entirely innocent, mother and daughter.
The victims were threatened and told to hand over the safe.
The pair were held in a room by Hutchinson, who knocked the mother unconscious while Milner desperately searched for the non-existent safe.
Milner, 45, of Orchid Meadow, Minsterley, was sentenced at Shrewsbury Crown Court today, and the Shropshire Star can now reveal that Hutchinson, 25, and of no-fixed-abode, was jailed for 50 months in April this year.
Restrictions imposed by the court meant the Hutchinson's sentence could not be revealed until the conclusion of Milner's case.
Milner had pleaded guilty to one burglary and one count of assaulting an emergency worker.
Oliver King, prosecuting, explained that the terrifying ordeal had taken place on March 20 last year, in the North Shropshire village of Prees.
He told how the police had received a 999 call, and added: "No one was speaking but police could hear two distressed females and in the background two men demanding money."
