A BURGLAR who broke into a Kendal man’s house while he was in hospital after he had beat him up has been sent to a mental hospital.

Shaun Joseph Boyd, 20, was one of two men who burgled David Taylor’s house in Market Place, Kendal, shortly after he punched and kicked the victim last February.

Last month Liam Colin Baxter, 21, of Overdale Close, Kendal, pleaded guilty to burglary and causing actual bodily harm to Mr Taylor.

He was given a ten-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 120 hours unpaid community work.

Boyd pleaded guilty to burgling Mr Taylor’s home, causing him actual bodily harm and assaulting his partner, Marsha Driscoll but could not be sentenced at that time because there were no places for him in suitable mental hospitals.

But on Tuesday Judge Paul Batty QC made a hospital order, confining him to a medium secure psychiatric units in Manchester or Preston.

The court heard Boyd, of Ghyllside, Oakbank, Whitehaven, was probably suffering from schizophrenia and needed treatment for ‘depression with psychotic episodes’.

Prosecutor Gerard Rogerson told the court the two men had been visiting Mr Taylor and ‘making a bit of a nuisance of themselves’, so he asked them to leave.

They refused to go, and when he asked them again Baxter put him in a headlock and threw him to the floor.

Both men then punched him repeatedly to the head and body, and Baxter kicked him.

When Ms Driscoll tried to intervene, he said, Boyd punched her, before returning to continue his attack on Mr Taylor.

Mr Taylor was taken to hospital with heavy bruising all over his head but ‘mercifully’ was not seriously injured, Mr Rogerson said.