A disgraced police worker, who was sacked for forging an official document to cover up missing money, has avoided jail.

Harold Ferguson, 52, worked as a property store officer for Northumbria Police for 20 years before the incident at South Shields police station, in December 1996.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that he was in charge of £240 in cash, medication and a pension book, belonging to an 81-year-old woman who had died at her home, in Cleadon.

Prosecutor Tim Gittins said Ferguson was meant to keep a record of the belongings and store them until they could be given to the next of kin.

But when the solicitor for the woman's family went to collect the items, Ferguson said the cash had been passed on to the Department of Social Security, along with her pension book.

He falsified a document to cover up the missing money.

Mr Gittins said: "Who has the money is a question that cannot be answered."

Ferguson, of Alice Street, South Shields, who has no previous convictions, admitted false accounting, at an earlier hearing. He was conditionally discharged for one year.