A mother of two grabbed a would-be thief by his shirt collar after a neighbour called her at work and warned her about a robbery in progress in her home.

Cheryl Jones held the 23-year-old St. George's man until Police arrived on Middle Road in Somerset and arrested him.

Long-time friend and neighbour Laurie Brown called Ms Jones at her job at the Tynes Bay Waste Disposal Facility after hearing cabinets and doors slamming in her home.

Ms Jones was heading home when she saw a man fitting Mrs. Brown's description riding a pedal bike along Middle Road in Somerset, near Mangrove Bay Road, .

Ms Jones said: "I saw him riding east on a little push-bike in a big black heavy coat. At first I thought, what's he doing in a big coat in this heat? "Then I noticed that jacket looked like mine. So I drove past him once or twice before pulling up alongside,'' she said.

She also noticed the man was wearing a book-bag with North Village on it that looked like her son's.

Then she realised "nobody but my child plays for North Village up here (in Dockyard)'', she said.

Ms Jones said: "He (the St. George's man) didn't really want to stop so when we got to the bus stop near Mangrove Bay, I pulled my car in front of him.'' The man had been seen prowling the Cochrane Road area, asking people for a girl named Mimi, days earlier by neighbours.

Ms Jones said she left her door open on Monday for a carpenter because her daughter would have left for school just prior to the carpenter's arrival.

She called the Police on her drive home but they wanted her to get there first and see what had happened before they would send a unit, Ms Jones said.

"I grabbed him around his neck. I held him there till the Police came,'' she said.

She used her cell phone to call Police again while the thief was asking her to forget about it, she said.

"He was saying, `Okay, you got me. Forget about it,' but it wasn't about that, it was about someone invading my privacy, my home.''