RESIDENTS of a Bournemouth flat grappled with a burglar and held him until police arrived.

Victor Anderson Cumberbatch was recently jailed for more than two years after being caught during two burglaries in Bournemouth and admitting the offences.

Carolyn Branford-Wood, prosecuting, told Bournemouth Crown Court the 46-year-old made his way into a flat in Tregonwell Road in the town centre when two cousins who lived there found him on April 19.

They did not believe his claims that he was there to see a friend and held on to him, the court heard.

Miss Branford-Wood said: “He started struggling and a glass door was smashed.

“The defendant said he was a ‘crack head’ and had made it in through the bathroom window.

“He took the opportunity to run, to try and escape, but he was restrained until police arrived.”

Bournemouth Crown Court was told how Cumberbatch, of Maxwell Road, Bournemouth, was also spotted on the stairs leading to a rooftop area at student flats in Bournemouth’s St Peter’s Road on February 17.

Miss Branford-Wood said a stolen Apple iMac computer monitor had been left on the roof after being taken from a bedroom and the owner confronted Cumberbatch as the police were called.

She told the court of 11 burglaries committed by Cumberbatch dating back to 1998 and said the new offences were committed while he was out of prison on licence and still within the time of his last sentence.

Kathleen Mulhern, defending, said he had been “in and out of custody for similar offences” and had a problem with drugs.

Judge Samuel Wiggs sentenced him to “the minimum sentence” open to him because he felt it was “not in the public interest” to give any longer.

Cumberbatch was given jail terms of 876 days for each offence with the sentences to run at the same time.