[A] MAN who made a chilling bomb threat during a series of nuisance 999 calls has been jailed for two years.
Andrew Bell, 40, also made terrifying phone threats to harm police and himself amid a drinking binge in January – only hours after being released from prison.
Bell made his calls from a payphone in Carlisle city centre despite being banned from the area under the strict terms of an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO). He was said to have stated he had a bomb which he planned to detonate.
Bell was sentenced at Carlisle Crown Court today (THURS) having admitted three offences. These were two ASBO breaches following separate city centre incidents which resulted in police deployment, and one in relation to the nuisance 999 calls.
Judge Peter Hughes QC noted the 165 offences on Bell’s criminal record, and that he had a “history of disobedience and repeated breaches” of court orders.
Sending Bell, of no fixed address, to prison Judge Hughes said of the bomb threat: “In the present climate in this country any such hoax has to be taken extremely seriously.”
