EIGHTEEN-year-old Katie Holroyd was confronted by an armed raider in the bedroom of her family's pub.

She was awoken at 6am on Sunday (Sept 15) by the intruder who walked into her room at the Elton View pub in Bury, and calmly switched on the main light. He claimed he was armed with a knife and demanded money.

The girl's father was asleep in a nearby room during Katie's terrifying ordeal.

She told the Bury Times: "There was nothing unusual about this man. He did not look drug-crazed. He just walked into my room, turned on the light and claimed to have a knife.

"I didn't believe he was going to harm me but it was terrifying. He kept demanding money and he eventually took my purse and a mobile phone."

After the intruder fled, Katie, who is studying an NVQ in bar management at the Eagley Drive pub, went into her dad's bedroom to alert him to the incident.

The raider is believed to have got into the pub through an insecure first-floor window.

Police are now linking the incident to two other burglaries in the area during the early hours of Sunday.

Just over half-an-hour before the Elton View raid, the licensee of the Black Bull in nearby Ainsworth Road disturbed two masked raiders who had also entered the pub through a first-floor window. A set of car keys were later discovered missing.

And within 40 minutes of the Elton View raid, burglars gained entry into the Brandlesholme pub in Brandlesholme Road via a first-floor front window. They escaped with around £750 in cash after searching a number of rooms. The intruder is described as white, aged 19, 5ft 7ins, and thin with short brown hair. He was wearing a dark blue sports jumper and blue tracksuit bottoms with black stripes down the legs.

PC John Flowers of Bury's Operational Police Unit said: "The Elton View raid is most disturbing. A number of Bury pubs were broken into on Sunday morning and over the last few weeks. On several occasions, the intruders have been disturbed by the licensees and simply fled.

"This will have been a frightening ordeal for Katie but she remained calm and was not physically harmed."

Anyone who knows the identity of the intruder or has any information about the spate of burglaries on Bury pubs should contact Bury CID on 0161 856 9150 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.