Female burglar met gardaí inside broken-into house

A court has heard how a woman who broke into a house armed with a baseball bat was arrested by two gardaí who were already inside the house investigating an earlier incident.

Thirty-nine-year-old Linda Mansfield of Kiltalown Way, Tallaght, told gardaí she was in a dispute with the owner of the house, Ashling Hooper, and wanted to "sort her out once and for all".

Mansfield, a married mother of three, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to aggravated burglary at Jobstown, Tallaght on December 28, 2010, and was given a three-year suspended sentence.

The court was also told the two women have now reconciled their differences.