A POLICEMAN has said he is "pleasantly surprised" by a sentence handed to three men who attacked an 87-year-old woman.

Three thugs were jailed for a total of 20 years on Friday, June 20, for mugging the pensioner as she made her way home from a shopping trip in Acton on September 15 last year.

The elderly victim, who suffered a fractured eye socket and broken arm, died in February this year, before Ali Said, Omar Musa and Awil Hassan were brought to justice after a painstaking police investigation.

Said, 19, of Hammersmith, was given eight years for the attack after pleading not guilty, despite the fact Musa and Hassan had admitted their crime.

Musa, 18, of Enfield Road, Acton, was jailed for six-and-a-half years, and Hassan, 24, from Hanwell, was given a five-and-a-half year sentence.

All three were caught on numerous CCTV cameras as they followed their victim along Acton High Street for 90 minutes, during which time she withdrew her pension, stopped for a drink in the Six Bells pub, and bought a fish supper.

They then followed her down Mill Hill Road before stealing her pension and shopping when she reached Cheltenham Place, close to her front door.

Detective Constable Dan Reddington, who lead the investigation for Ealing Police, had to work through more than 20 hours of CCTV images before he could identify the suspects.

He said: "I was pleasantly surprised by the sentence.

"It was all down to CCTV, as we did not have any witnesses, and all we had to work on was these images.

"We managed to get CCTV from shops the victim had been into, and when we collated the footage we could see the three men had been stalking her for about and hour-and-a-half.

"Unfortunately we did not have images of the actual attack, but we did have pictures of them following her moments before she was attacked, and without the CCTV we would not have got a conviction."

At Isleworth Crown Court, Hassan's lawyer admitted his client had a drug problem, and had committed the robbery to fuel his habit. All three men were known to police before the incident, and were said to be regulars in Acton High Street.

DC Reddington said: "I hope these sentences do act as a deterrent to people thinking about committing these kind of offences.

"The judge obviously took into account the fact the victim was a vulnerable lady, the level of violence they used against her and the fact it was clearly pre-meditated.

"It did have a big effect on her as she spent most of the last few months in hospital and a care home, and she only moved back to her own flat a few weeks before she passed away."