An intruder has been jailed for breaking into an isolated cottage and subjecting a family to a knifepoint ordeal.

Sean Day armed himself with a kitchen knife after he walked into the cottage at Pinn, near Sidmouth, where a terrified boy found him standing next to his father with the weapon in his hand.

The owner of the house was asleep on a sofa and the boy came downstairs after playing computer games to see Day just feet away from him.

Day fled when the boy woke his father and fetched his older brother. However, Day tried to escape in a car which he took from a nearby farm - but which broke down before he could get away.

Day, 35, of Lock Close, Sidmouth, admitted burglary, taking a car without consent, and resisting arrest and was jailed for three years by Judge Francis Gilbert, QC at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: “This was an uneventful evening for this family. The father was asleep on a sofa and his sons were playing computer games upstairs.

“At 9.45pm, the younger child came downstairs and saw you standing at the end of the sofa with a knife. He went to fetch his older brother and [subsequently] they saw you in the kitchen, where the father ushered you out.

“It is clear you went in to steal to get money to buy drugs. This was a serious and frightening incident for all the family and certainly the young boy who saw you near his sleeping father with a knife.

“This was a burglary carried out for gain in which you armed yourself in case you were detected by the sleeping householder. It was more serious because the occupiers were at home and you armed yourself with that knife.”

Mr Tom Bradnock, prosecuting, said Day had gone on to struggle with the police, who found him 500 metres away after his attempt to take a car from a farm had failed.

Day took a mobile phone from the sofa and an electronic cigarette from the kitchen and dropped the knife near the door as he left.

Mr Rupert Taylor, defending, said Day was suffering from mental illness at the time and had stopped taking a methadone prescription.

He said Day bitterly regrets going into the house and is keen to address his drug problems.