A CONVICTED robber who escaped from prison before being arrested in a stand-off with armed police has been handed more jail time.

Andrew Sutcliffe, from Orford, was serving a seven-year stretch at HMP Thorn Cross for ‘threatening to blow a shop assistant’s brains out’ during a raid on a Post Office when he fled custody in March.

He was recaptured more than two months later when a heavy police presence swarmed his home on Melville Close.

Warrington Guardian:

On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 13 – the day after his 39th birthday – armed officers surrounded the property where Sutcliffe was hiding out.

While the wanted man initially refused to come out of the house, he was detained after a stand-off.

Warrington Guardian:

Sutcliffe admitted escaping from lawful custody and affray against the police officers who attended the scene as he appeared in Chester Crown Court via video link to HMP Altcourse on Friday, June 26.

Warrington Guardian:

And he was handed a further nine months in prison by judge Simon Berkson.

The defendant found himself inside Thorn Cross prison after being put behind bars in July 2017.

Warrington Guardian:

Sutcliffe was found guilty of robbery and possession of an imitation firearm in connection with an early hours raid on the post office on Poplars Avenue in January the same year.

He entered the store brandishing a fake handgun and with his face covered by a scarf before telling a worker: “I’m not messing about, I’ll blow your brains out.”

The heroin addict stole £80 from the till and fled the scene on a bike.

Sutcliffe has a string of previous convictions – including a ‘near identical robbery’ a decade earlier, numerous burglaries and assaulting a police officer by attacking him with his own baton in 2003.