A TEENAGER who broke into a pregnant woman’s house in the early hours of the morning after she fell out with his friend has been spared jail.

Preston Crown Court heard Nathan McPoland, 18, went to the woman’s house in Barrow after a series of text messages earlier in the evening.

The woman, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, woke at around 3am on July 27 to see McPoland standing in her bedroom doorway.

A car was taken and two other defendants - a man and a woman - were sentenced for aggravated vehicle taking at an earlier hearing at Barrow Magistrates' Court.

McPoland denied burglary and criminal damage and was sent to Preston Crown Court, where a jury found him guilty of burglary.

He was cleared of a charge of criminal damage to the woman's door.

Recorder Phillip Parry, sentencing, said: “The jury must have decided that you and at least one of the others - probably the person you were with that night - kicked the door in, and that person was responsible for the criminal damage.

“They must have been satisfied that the woman saw you at her bedroom door.

“You really should have stayed away from this. This wasn’t really anything to do with you. You should have let them get on with it.

“The woman had her issues and I know you said you were unhappy with the text messages that went round that night, but it wasn’t your fight to get involved in.

“You shouldn’t have gone round. It was the dead of night.

“It would have been very frightening for your victim and you already knew at that stage she was in the early stages of pregnancy.

“Nobody should be frightened like that in their own home in the dead of night.”

Recorder Parry said he was prepared to give McPoland, of Hibbert Road, Barrow, a second chance but warned him: “If you throw it back in my face you won’t get another.”

McPoland was given an 18-month community order with a 20-day rehabilitation activity requirement.

But he warned McPoland: “If you breach this order you could be looking at a spell in a young offenders' institute.”