A POLICE investigation is under way into claims a young woman fought to stop a crazed man breaking into her flat - while officers in a station 200 yards away failed to answer her 999 call.

Christine Burke, 27, had arrived home by taxi after a night out and was walking to her door when she was approached by a stranger.

The man, who appeared drunk, was wearing a blood-soaked eye patch and asked to come into her flat.

Christine, a trainer with a mobile phone company, dashed through the door and slammed it shut behind her.

The man smashed out the glass in the door and hurled bricks through the bedroom window of her flat in Newcastle's West End.

She rang the police who said her call had been logged - but they did not send an officer from the West End station, less than a minute's walk away.

For almost 45 minutes Christine cowered in her home as the man laid siege to her front door.

Eventually a neighbour heard the commotion in the early hours of Saturday, June 10, and raced outside to chase the man away.

Her landlord Fred Watson, 60, has made a complaint to Northumbria Police.

He said: "It made me furious to think of Christine sitting terrified in the flat when the police did nothing a couple of hundred yards away.

A Northumbria Police spokeswoman said: "This clearly has been a distressing incident and a full internal investigation is under way to estab-lish the exact circumstances of how we reacted."