Black Country axe attack burglar locked up for seven years

A judge described the attack by 26-year-old Reece Parkes at a Great Barr house as ‘horrific’.

The court heard how Parkes had stolen the axe after initially breaking into the garden shed of the property in Stanton Road, Hamstead, just before 6pm on January 10 this year.

He then used the axe to hack his way into the house and made his way upstairs where he stole jewellery from one of the bedrooms.

He was still searching through the rooms when the occupier Patrick Glass returned home.

Seeing a light in a first-floor window, Mr Glass went upstairs, thinking one of his daughters was home but as he entered one of the rooms he felt a blow to the head, said Mr Howard Searle, prosecuting.

“He was initially confused but then the adrenalin kicked in and there was a scuffle at the top of the stairs, with the defendant still hitting Mr Glass on the head with the axe,” Mr Searle told Stafford Crown Court.

The victim managed to push Parkes away and the defendant fell downstairs.

For a brief while he lay unconscious at the bottom of the staircase, with the axe embedded in a radiator.

The householder tried to call the police, the court heard, but he was prevented by blood from his wounds running into his eyes, and the defendant was able to escape.

Mr Glass eventually raised the alarm on the telephone landline.

When paramedics arrived he was taken to hospital where he received stitches to several cuts on his head and neck.

The court heard there was also £550 damage to the house.

Parkes was picked up by police three days later in a nearby garden.

He had left behind at the scene a hat which had his DNA on it, said Mr Searle.

In a victim impact statement, Mr Glass said the medics had told him he was lucky to be alive, and he believed that if one of his daughters had confronted the burglar instead of himself, she might have been killed.

He had been off work suffering from mental as well as physical scars and said his family no longer felt safe in their home.

The court was told the defendant had a chronic addiction to controlled drugs.

He had kept the axe with him to break into any locked drawers, he claimed, rather than to use it on any occupants.

Parkes, of Rolfe Street, Smethwick, pleaded guilty to burglary and robbery.

Jailing him, Judge Shaun Smith, QC, said: “This is one of the most dreadful things that can happen to someone in their own home. It was an horrific attack. The victim must have been petrified.”