A BRAVE pensioner who was robbed in her remote Borders home where she has lived for the past 60 years has vowed to stay put despite her terrifying ordeal.

Callous Taylor Wright repeatedly threatened to shoot 80-year-old Sheila Turnbull after pointing a spray painted BB gun at her in the living room of her cottage. He knew the victim from his childhood and that as she lived on her own in the heart of the Yarrow Valley, half a mile from a main road, and that she would be vulnerable.

As 21-year-old Wright was jailed for five years and 10 months at the High Court in Edinburgh, a victim impact statement said Mrs Turnbull feared living alone and could not stay there for another winter.

But speaking at home after last week’s case Mrs Turnbull insisted she was over it and has now beefed up security.

She said: “I did go and stay with relatives for 10 days after it happened. But I have lived here for 60 years and not going anywhere now. There have been a few extra locks put in and I am fine now.

“The sentence could have been longer for what happened in my view but I am over it now and have to move on.

“It all happened where I am sitting just now. At first his face was covered up a bit but as he was leaving I realised I recognised him from the past.

“Nothing is supposed to ever happen here, it is a quite part of the world. But things change which is sad.” The court heard that the robber had spent a part of his childhood living at a neighbouring farm in the remote Yarrow Valley.

Wright armed himself with a spray-painted BB gun which his victim believed was real and robbed her of cash and a bank card after getting her to reveal her PIN number.

He also robbed her of her car to make his getaway before using her bank card to get more cash from an ATM in Selkirk.

Unemployed Wright, of no fixed abode, earlier admitted assaulting and robbing his victim at her cottage at Yarrow, on March 18 this year while possessing an imitation firearm and after being freed on bail in November last year.

He also admitted using the bank card to steal money from the cash machine on the same day and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by putting his victim’s mobile phone in water, disconnecting a land line phone and removing her care alarm from a wall.

Advocate depute Peter McCormack had previously told the court that Mrs Turnbull had suffered angina pain during the raid but was not physically injured.

However, he added: “The experience has had a profound psychological impact on her.” Defence counsel Victoria Dow said that Wright regretted the offences and could not quite believe what he had done. She said he had had “a troubled upbringing” and had suffered from anxiety and depression.