A balaclava-wearing thug who broke into a couple’s home and threatened to kill them before stealing £5000 is bidding to have his nine-year jail term slashed.

Patrick Keenan was sentenced to almost a decade behind bars after appearing at the High Court in Paisley.

Keenan, 23, and accomplice Patrick Mooney, 41, - who was jailed for 10 years - admitted targeting families of small business owners who they thought kept large sums of cash.

The pair, while masked, broke into a family home in Chryston in February 2021 and forced the terrified occupants to hand over thousands of pounds.

Glasgow Times:

Keenan and Mooney

The husband heard his wife screaming before their patio doors were smashed in by Mooney and Keenan who were clutching a pole and baseball bat.

The victims were told: "Shut up or I will kill you."

One of the occupants managed to dial 999. He did not speak, but the operator could hear clear sounds of a "disturbance and shouting".

The raiders pushed, punched and kicked the people living there while making demands for £50,000.

They eventually fled with £5000 in a getaway car, which was later found burnt out a short distance away.

Keenan’s legal team are now challenging the severity of the sentence handed down by Lord Arthurson last month.

The Glasgow Times can reveal the thug has ordered solicitors to lodge documents at the High Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. 

He will now appear before appeal judges next month where legal arguments will be laid out to decide if the length of time he serves in custody for his brutal crimes should be reduced.

As well as the North Lanarkshire robbery, Keenan and Mooney also targeted a property in East Calder, breaking into a flat where two girls aged just eight and 12 were watching TV while their father was downstairs in the restaurant where he worked.

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One of the children initially heard a loud bang and other noise before being confronted by two men.

They were armed with a spade and ordered the girls into a bedroom.

Prosecutor John Keenan told how they then demanded the youngsters 'tell them where the money was' and after Keenan and Mooney fled with cash, the girls raised the alarm.

Keenan and Mooney pleaded guilty to assault and robbery, admitting that both properties had been deliberately targeted.

Jailing the pair, judge Lord Arthurson said: “These crimes, which were violent, targeted, concerted and obviously carefully planned in their nature, involved the masking by you of your faces with balaclavas, the forcing of entry into the domestic homes of persons, including children, unknown to you, and the use by you of a variety of weapons, namely a spade, a metal pole and a baseball bat.”

Keenan has 11 previous offences and was jailed in 2019 for housebreaking and theft. He was freed under early release when the home invasions were carried out.

The judge said both would be on licence and under supervision, adding: "It is necessary to protect the public from the risk which each of you would present on your release from the custodial parts of your sentences.”

A spokeswoman for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service: “We cannot comment on active proceedings.”

A spokesman for Scottish Courts and Tribunals added: “An appeal hearing in relation to sentencing is set to take place on August 2.”