A JAILBIRD who escaped from prison to go to a family funeral is back behind bars after five months on the run.

Michael Metcalfe simply walked out of the low-security unit in Lancashire to see his relatives in Hartlepool, a court heard.

He was coming towards the end of a seven-year sentence for his part in a brutal samurai sword attack at a village pub in 2010.

Get-away driver Metcalfe was being held in the Category D jail east of Blackpool when he disappeared in November last year.

It was not until the end of April that the 28-year-old was picked up again - at his home in West View Road, Hartlepool.

Prosecutor Jenny Haigh told Teesside Crown Court that he would have been due for release in three weeks' time had he not absconded.

The judge, Recorder Eric Elliott, QC, imposed a nine-month sentence after Metcalfe pleaded guilty to a charge of escape.

Jim Withyman, mitigating, told the court: "The defendant instructs me that he had had a bereavement in his family. His aunty had died, and he wished to go to her funeral.

"At the same time, he got a telephone call from his girlfriend saying she had miscarried. He must have been on day-release when the baby was conceived.

"He effectively walked out the door of the prison, and went home."

Metcalfe originally got three-and-a-half years for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm, but it was doubled on appeal.

Around a dozen thugs with balaclavas, swords and baseball bats struck at the Oddfellow Arms in Haswell, County Durham, to attack the landlady's husband.

In an attempt to disguise the target of their violence, the gang beat up other men in the pub.

Metcalfe never entered the pub, but pleaded guilty along with two other men.