A YOUNG mum today told how her baby's life was put at risk "for the sake of a bag of heroin".

And Tracy Butler, 21, questioned the reasoning of magistrates who jailed drug addict burglar Paul Lee Hargreaves for just four months for the incident.

"My baby could have ended up dead because of what he did and that just isn't long enough," said Tracy.

Thomas, aged nine months at the time, toddled out of her house in a baby-walker and on to a busy main road after Hargreaves sneaked in and stole a mobile phone before running off and leaving the doors wide open.

Tracy, who had been vacuuming, came downstairs at 6.20pm on July 10 to find the porch and front doors of her terraced home, in Mosley Street, Blackburn, wide open and Thomas outside on the pavement just feet from passing cars and buses.

"I was horrified," said Tracy, who works as a shop assistant. "I ran out and brought Thomas in. When I discovered my mobile phone was missing, I realised I had been burgled. My stomach turned to think that someone had been in the house with Thomas while I was upstairs. I was shaking I was that frightened and upset.

"I understand he was stealing to pay for his drugs habit and for the sake of a bag of heroin my baby could have been killed," she said.

Hargreaves, 29, of Chester Close, Blackburn, pleaded guilty at the town's magistrates to five offences of shoplifting and two of burglary. He was sentenced to four months on each of the burglary charges to run consecutively.

Under recent Home Office guidelines he could be released from prison as early as September on an electronic curfew tag after serving just a quarter of his sentence.

Tracy has fitted new door locks and now always makes sure they are shut tight.

Defence solicitor Jonathon Taylor told Blackburn magistrates that Hargreaves was "desperately sorry" for what he had done. He said all Hargreaves' offending was motivated by his addiction to heroin.