A PENSIONER is calling for tougher sentences after the burglar he confronted in his garage was fined £125.

Lesley Williamson, 68, was terrified when he went outside on a night last February to investigate a noise and disturbed a burglar carrying a claw hammer.

The thief had climbed over a fence before entering the garage at Mr Williamson's Darlington home and had loaded tools and two carrier bags of frozen food from a freezer in the garage on to the pensioner's son's £500 mountain bike.

Mr Williamson, who suffers from asthma, managed to keep the man talking while his wife, Barbara, telephoned the police.

The burglar was swinging a claw hammer around and banging it on the walls of the garage.

Mr Williamson said: "He just kept saying he wanted to get out and if he couldn't get out through the garage he would go through the house.

"My wife was terrified. I managed to keep him here by talking to him. It was very frightening, especially with him having the hammer."

The police arrived and, after a struggle, arrested the man.

The burglar, James Patrick O'Driscoll, 27, from Eden Road, Middlesbrough, was last month convicted of burglary and affray. He was fined £125 and ordered to pay £60 costs by Darlington magistrates - a punishment which has left Mr Williamson angry.

He said: "If he had got away, it would have been about £700 worth of goods. I think the magistrates have been too lenient. It is no deterrent.

I thought he might have got a prison sentence, after I confronted him, and all the distress caused. When you are 68 it is very worrying. You wonder if it is going to happen again."

Mr Williamson, a retired farm worker, has installed more security measures at his home, but he and his wife have been left shaken by the burglary.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service, said that had the incident happened in Mr Williamson's house, then O'Driscoll might have faced more serious charges.

He said that cases of burglary from buildings other than homes were considered less serious than house burglaries.

"However, the use or threat of violence would normally be considered as an aggravating feature," he said.