Daughter of soap opera star is found guilty of burglary

The daughter of the Coronation Street star Johnny Briggs has been found guilty of burglary.

Karen Briggs, 35, was convicted yesterday at the Old Bailey of an offence in which Ronald Hintz, 58, was stabbed, but she was found not guilty of an alternative charge of aggravated burglary.

Judge Jeremy Roberts said Briggs, who had a "serious drug problem", would be sentenced tomorrow morning.

"She was living with a serious professional criminal and no doubt she only became involved in serious professional crime because of that," he said.

Briggs, whose father plays Mike Baldwin in the soap, claimed that she had gone to sell her Vauxhall Cavalier to Mr Hintz after running up £3,000 in rent arrears on her council flat in Staines, west London.

However, she admitted that she was persuaded by a unnamed friend to go ahead with the burglary in New Denham, Buckinghamshire, where Mr Hintz ran a pub.

Briggs and two accomplices, whom she refused to name, used the sale as an elaborate plan to steal from Mr Hintz.

She went to his house on 14 June last year. Two men burst in with a pistol and a knife. The prosecution said she feigned terror but was in on the plan.

Mr Hintz was knifed in the chest but has since recovered. He handed over £2,200 to the intruders, who were driven off by Briggs.