A thug who battered and robbed an 88-year-old woman leaving her with devastating bruises to her face has been jailed.
Evelyn Birchall was sleeping in bed at her home in Chorley, Lancashire when she was viciously attacked by Andrew Hodgkinson.
The pensioner at first thought she was being attacked by animal as she fell onto the floor in the late-night assault.
She feared she was going to be raped after asking Hodgkinson what he wanted for him to reply: ‘I want you’.
Hodgkinson, 36, then demanded money before ransacking her home, vandalising her pictures and stealing jewellery.
Victim Evelyn Birchall was battered by the robber after he broke into her home at night
Mrs Birchall, who worked as a secretary for former England rugby captain Bill Beaumont before she retired, suffered terrible bruising to her face and was bedridden and unable to eat or sleep for days after the incident on August 26.
Hodgkinson was jailed for six years and eight months for robbery. Recorder David Potter imposed an extended licence period of three years.
The judge told him: ‘You bent right down and said: “I want you”.
‘That was for Mrs Birchall a horrific moment, a moment when she, albeit only for a second, thought that she was going to be raped. It was undoubtedly a truly terrifying ordeal for Evelyn Birchall.’
Dangerous thug Andrew Hodgkinson has been jailed for a sickening attack on an elderly woman in her own home
Preston Crown Court heard the frail pensioner, who lives alone and has heart problems, woke up in darkness to find Hodgkinson pulling her arms.
Prosecuting, David Traynor said: ‘She woke up to find something touching her. She wasn’t sure if it was a man or an animal.
‘She received a blow to the face. She tried to fight off whatever it was, but the defendant was fighting back. She describes him as being vicious.’
The prosecutor added: ‘He pulled everything off the bed and threw it across the bedroom, and that resulted in Mrs Birchall landing on the floor. She was unable to get up without support.
‘She was forced to crawl across the floor to the bed to get up, but as she managed to get to her feet the defendant returned into the room and pushed her, causing her to fall.’
Mrs Birchall, left, after the attack, and, right, being comforted by her daughter Larraine Hilton
At 12.40am she managed to crawl to a neighbour’s home in the dark for help.
Evelyn stayed with her daughter for two weeks after the attack – but the independent pensioner was determined to return home.
Hodgkinson left his fingerprints and footprints at the scene and was arrested hours later at his home after a public appeal – with the stolen goods recovered.
Following the attack, former rugby star Bill Beaumont said: ‘She was secretary to my father for many years and worked for the family business until she retired.
‘When you have known someone for so long it is a real shock.
‘From all the family, we send her our best wishes and it is good to hear she is out of hospital and on the mend.’
Rugby legend Bill Beaumont, for whom Mrs Birchill once worked, said he was ‘deeply shocked’
Mrs Birchill’s husband Alan, a fireman, died of a heart attack 26 years ago. He was aged 65.
After the hearing, Detective Inspector Warren Atkinson said: ‘This was a brutal and sustained assault on an elderly lady in her own home.
‘The violence used on this vulnerable woman simply beggars belief and it is a miracle she was not more seriously injured.
‘In 27 years of service I have never witnessed such levels of gratuitous violence.’