A CARLISLE man who repeatedly made a chilling bomb threat after dialling 999 has been spared immediate prison.
Matthew Adam Neale, 43, pleaded for help with mental health problems when he called police before making a violent vow which centred on Cumbria Partnership Trust‘s former city centre base.
“I am about to throw a Molotov cocktail through the front door of the Portland Square offices,” Neale said during a two-minute foul-mouthed tirade just after 6pm on December 10 which was recorded and played at Carlisle Crown Court.
Insisting he was “deadly serious”, he continued: “I will set alight the building. Come and see me now, otherwise you are in trouble.”
Neale also repeated a threat he’d made to Cumbria police, stating an intention to mail a box of chocolates containing a bomb to the force’s Carleton Hall headquarters in Penrith.
Having admitted a threatening message offence during an previous magistrates’ court appearance, Neale, of St Ann’s Road, Carlisle, was sentenced today (MON).
Recorder Christopher Hudson heard Neale was the subject of a suspended jail term at the time he made the phone threats. This was imposed after he led police on a dangerous Carlisle car chase which ended close to the city centre and caused around £9,000 damage to officers’ vehicles.
Recorder Hudson considered a “favourable”pre-sentence report which described Neale as “intelligent”, and that previously withdrawn adult social services support had been reinstated to a limited degree.
He suspended a 90-day prison sentence for two years and imposed 15 days’ rehabilitation. Observing Neale had behaved in a “pretty disgraceful fashion”, the judge told him: “What you should really do is start behaving and having a degree of consideration for those who are ultimately trying to help you.”
