A BALACLAVA-wearing teenage burglar who broke into a house with a long-handled screwdriver has been locked up for eight months.

Callum Warne-Cleave fled over a garden wall and across a garage roof when the police caught him red-handed raiding the address in Worden Grove, Clayton, Bradford.

Warne-Cleave, 18, who is currently serving an 18-month custodial sentence for housebreaking, would be a “third striker” if he was older, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

Now at HMP Doncaster, he appeared before the court on a video link to be sentenced after pleading guilty to burgling a house and garage at 10.30am on October 30 last year.

The court heard that the teenager had notched up 24 convictions for 60 offences, including attempted robbery, criminal damage and a string of burglaries.

Prosecutor Philip Adams told the court that Warne-Cleave went round the back of the house while the occupier was at work, after first knocking on the front door.

He prised open the conservatory door and smashed a patio door to get into the main part of the house.

But a neighbour who had seen him acting suspiciously had alerted the police, Mr Adams said.

They found Warne-Cleave in a balaclava and gloves and holding a long-handled screwdriver.

The screwdriver and gloves were recovered nearby along with a pair of garden shears Warne-Cleave had stolen from the garage.

The balaclava, with broken glass and the teenager’s DNA on it, was found in a snicket.

Warne-Cleave was arrested on November 6 and made no reply to police questions.

The following month, he was given a detention and training order for a series of burglaries committed between August and October 2018.

The court was told that his earliest release date was July 2.

Warne-Cleave’s barrister, Gerald Hendron, said the teenager had done exceptionally well at Wetherby Young Offender Institution, where he was housed before he was moved to HMP Doncaster to serve the balance of his sentence.

He had volunteered for the Restorative Justice scheme and had met the victims of some of his burglaries to apologise.

“He still has youth on his side and he has time to change – and he must,” Mr Hendron said.

Judge Jonathan Rose said that Warne-Cleave had an appalling record for house burglary.

“The next sentence will be about three years and then it goes up from that,” the judge warned him.

Warne-Cleave told him: “I don’t want this life.”

The judge said he had been a model prisoner at Wetherby and he was impressed by the fact that the teenager had faced the owners of the houses he had raided to apologise in person.