ALL he did was donate three bin bags full of his children’s unwanted clothes to his local charity shop.

But little did Tom Horne know that it would see him confronted with the heavy hand of the law and thrown into a police cell.

The dad-of-three’s good deed ended in a nightmare when he was wrongly accused of breaking into a charity shop in Portswood.

The drama unfolded late on Thursday night when the 26- year-old’s front door was knocked on as he and his partner were heading to bed.

Concerned with who could be banging on his door so late, he went to the window and was shocked to see two police officers on his doorstep.

Worried that they may not be who they claimed to be, he asked them to put their badges through the letterbox but when they refused he said he wouldn’t open the door unless they calmed down as his young children were asleep upstairs.

Mr Horne claims the police then threatened to break the door down, with one starting to kick the door and another reappearing with a door enforcer.

When he opened the door he says he was handcuffed and told he was under arrest on suspicion of burglary, before being taken to a police cell.

Dazed and confused by what was happening, it was only during his hour-long interview that he started piecing together what he was being accused of. He claims officers told him they were investigating a burglary at the Help the Aged shop, in Portswood Road, overnight on August 11, and that his fingerprints were found on a black bin liner.

It was then he realised that just days before that burglary, he had donated three bin bags full of clothes belonging to his children, aged 10 months, two and six.

It wasn’t long after explaining this that Mr Horne said he was released at around 2am, with no further action, but he received no apology from police.

Mr Horne, of Octavia Road, who admits his fingerprints are on the police system following an incident when he was a teenager, said: “I was scared.

“My children were asleep upstairs and there were two men, claiming to be officers banging on my door, threatening to kick it down if I didn’t open it.

“I was confused and felt like I was in some kind of nightmare.

It wasn’t until they started talking about black bin bags that I realised this had all been a mistake.

“But I didn’t get any apology from them.

“This could have all been avoided if they had checked with the shop’s donation register first, because they would have seen that I had signed a form relating to my donation.

“To come to my door like they did, at that time of night, is in my opinion, disgraceful.”

Officers are continuing to investigate the burglary.