Teenage armed robber is locked up in Bolton (From This Is Lancashire)

Teenage armed robber is locked up in Bolton

5:57am Tuesday 16th March 2010 in

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A NINE-YEAR-OLD boy pleaded for his life as robbers broke into his home and bound him and his mother with tape.

Terrified Demir Topcu begged: “Please don’t kill me. I am too young to die,” as a knife was held to his throat.

His mum, Claire, tried to fight back, but was knocked unconscious.

Bolton Crown Court heard how Romanian traveller Visinel Andrei and his accomplice, who has never been caught, broke into the family’s luxury home at Moss Hall Farm, Plodder Lane, Farnworth, by taking slates off the roof.

Details of the ordeal last October were revealed at Bolton Crown Court before Andrei, aged 16, of St John Street, Salford, was sentenced to six years’ detention.

Geoff Whelan, prosecuting, told the court how Mrs Topcu and her son were in their bedrooms at 11.20pm on October 2 when the little boy heard his dog barking on the landing and came out of his room to hear banging sounds coming from downstairs.

He fled back to his bedroom and shouted for his mother. When he ventured on to the landing again, Andrei grabbed him round the throat and pushed him to the floor, tying his hands together with packing tape.

As Mrs Topcu woke to her son’s shouts, she spotted a man beside her bed who then jumped on her.

Fearing he was a rapist, she fought back, grabbing her attacker in a headlock and punching him in the head and face.

She only stopped when they both fell to the floor and she was knocked unconscious by a blow to the side of her head.

When Mrs Topcu came round, her arms and legs had been bound with parcel tape and one of the robbers, who had found a large knife in the kitchen, was holding it to her son’s neck and demanding money.

The robbers eventually found £9,000 in the bottom of her husband, Erkum’s, wardrobe.

He had withdrawn it from the bank to pay builders, who were due to start building a cattery at the couple’s farm the following week.

Having finished their search, one of the robbers took Demir downstairs and demanded to know where the home’s CCTV system was kept.

“The male with the knife hit Demir on the side of his head with the blade part of the kitchen knife,” Mr Whelan said, adding that the child was also punched and slapped.

The robbers fled with the cash and CCTV console, leaving Demir and his mother tied up in her bedroom.

At 12.20am, Mr Topcu, who had been working, returned home. Fearing the robbers were still in the house, his wife shouted to him to run away.

When she heard him screaming outside, trying to alert neighbours, she feared he was being attacked.

Desperate to go to his aid, she asked Demir to bite through the tape binding her hands.

When this did not work, she found a cigarette lighter on the floor which she used to burn through the tape.

Mr Whelan said Mrs Topcu rushed to the bedroom window intending to jump out and help her husband when she saw a police car arriving.

Andrei, who has previous convictions for theft and shoplifting, was arrested two weeks later.

Forensic scientists had managed to get a partial DNA profile matching his from a piece of parcel tape he had bitten through when tying up Mrs Topcu.

Mrs Topcu and her son were unable to pick him out in an identification parade, but Andrei later admitted his part in the crime.

He told officers he had been pressured into taking part in the robbery by older Romanian men and that he had gone into the house with a man named Cioara, who has still not been caught.

In letter to the court, Mrs Topcu and her son told of the devastating effect the robbery had on them.

She has spent thousands of pounds on extra security, including bars on windows.

Mrs Topcu and her son have had to receive counselling and Demir, once a happy boy, will not go outside or into any room in the house alone.He now sleeps in his parents’ room with the door locked and a Rottweiler dog by his side for protection.

Mrs Topcu wears a panic alarm on her wrist.

Andrei, who has a partner and an 18-month-old child, claimed to be aged 16 and, Mr Whelan said, the prosecution had no way of proving he was older.

He pleaded guilty to robbery and two counts of false imprisonment the day before his trial was due to start last month.

Mr Recorder Pearce told Andrei he had subjected his victims to an “appalling experience”.

He said: “They must have been utterly terrified by your presence and your behaviour.”

jrowe@ theboltonnews.co.uk