A 62-year-old woman who robbed a butcher of £10 will be held in a psychiatric hospital until it is felt safe to free her.

Salvia Mucha, who also has a history of fire setting, will now get treatment under a hospital order.

And she is also subject to a restriction order meaning doctors can impose conditions on her when she is finally freed from treatment.

Claire Marlow, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that Mucha threatened a member of staff at Butler’s Butchers on Borough Parade, Chippenham.

She said the defendant went to the shop at 7.20am on Saturday, July 19, last year and started talking to the man behind the counter.

Miss Marlow said:"She was talking very fast and giggling. After a conversation she said to him 'Give me £10 out of the till or I will kill you'. She made the gesture with her fingers of a gun.

"He said there other people in the shop, she said she would kill them as well. She said she would get people to come and kill them. He gave her a £10 note."

Miss Marlow said the incident was caught on CCTV and police tracked her down in the town centre later that day.

She said the money on her was not hers and that she had to threaten a man in the shop to get it.

Miss Marlow said when she was in the cells at the police station she threw a glass of water in the face of community psychiatric nurse who had come to see her.

Then, when the defendant was given a portable phone to speak to her solicitor, she put the handset in the toilet.

Mucha, of Chelwood Close, Chippenham, pleaded guilty to robbery, common assault and criminal damage.

The court heard she had previous convictions for possessing a bladed article sending messages on the phone network to cause annoyance.

Representing herself, after sacking her lawyers, she told the court she wanted to change her guilty plea to the robbery as she was under the influence of pharmaceutical drugs at the time she entered it.

But Judge Tim Mousley QC told her she would not be able to have a trial as there was no reason to suggest her plea was equivocal.

The court heard from a doctor who said Mucha, who is currently being detained for treatment in a hospital in Pontrypridd, south Wales, was concerned about her setting fires.

He said the staff at prison had told him of one incident and the defendant spoke of another fire at her flat.

Passing sentence the judge said: "I have to sentence you for this single offence of robbery where the circumstances of it really speak for themselves. It seems to me you were unwell at the time.

"Your state of mental health has improved. Your previous convictions give rise to cause for concern for the safety of the public and I also take into account the incident I have been told about of arson.

"It seems at this stage of life you need mental health treatment, as you have in the past.

"I am satisfied having heard the psychiatric and mental evidence this is an appropriate case for a hospital order and restraining order."