Creepy Neighbour Steals Single Mum’s Used Pads and Baby’s Dirty Nappies

A young single mother has told how she was left terrified and suffering nightmares after catching her elderly neighbour stealing bags of her used sanitary products and her newborn baby’s soiled nappies from her bins.

Michelle, then 22 and living alone with her infant daughter on a residential street in Warrington, discovered the shocking theft on her own CCTV camera. The footage captured pensioner Ernest O’Neill, 66, of Hardy Street, approaching her bins, lifting out a yellow bag containing the highly personal waste, and walking off with it.

“I didn’t really think anyone would touch it or take it because it’s quite personal,” Michelle said. “It made me feel like my privacy was invaded. It was a bit creepy.”

The incident was only the start of a campaign of harassment that left the former care worker feeling trapped and anxious in her own home.

O’Neill was also caught on camera repeatedly walking past her property, peering into her kitchen window while she washed dishes, sticking his tongue out, giving rude hand gestures and waving at her security camera in what she described as deliberate attempts to intimidate her.

“It was nearly every day,” she said. “He was sticking his fingers up at the camera, making strange tongue motions, waving at the camera. It was clearly aimed at me because it was my camera. It made me feel quite anxious. I felt like I couldn’t go out. I started to have nightmares and I was just worried constantly – worried in case he got violent or if he ever tried to get into my house.”

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Fellow resident Colin Green had already warned Michelle about O’Neill when she moved in while seven months pregnant. Green described years of disruption from the same neighbour, including loud music deliberately turned up and down, banging, clanging and shouted threats through windows. “From that very first night he was back in, I have had nothing but banging, clanging, blasting music,” Green said.

When Michelle reported the bin theft, O’Neill claimed he had only been trying to be a “good neighbour” because her bins were overflowing. Police were called and later charged him after she handed over the CCTV evidence. He admitted harassment at Warrington Magistrates’ Court. The offences spanned October 2024 to April 2025.

O’Neill was given a 12-month community order with rehabilitation activity requirements, fined £120 and ordered to pay £199 in costs and a victim surcharge. A two-year restraining order banned him from approaching Michelle.

Sentencing him, JP Jeffrey Dodd said the probation service would work with him “to support the way you think about things and how to understand what is acceptable and unacceptable.”

Michelle has since said the restraining order was breached, and the council told her she would have to move. While she described the prospect of a fresh start as a “relief,” she also felt it was unfair that she was the one forced to leave while her neighbour remained.

The case was featured in a recent episode of the Channel 5 series At War with Next Door, in which Michelle bravely shared her ordeal and the disturbing CCTV footage of the theft and the taunting behaviour that followed.

The story has highlighted the particular vulnerability of a young mother living alone with a newborn, and the lasting impact of neighbourly harassment that invades even the most private aspects of daily life.