A MAN who trashed a Kendal flat after making a series of chilling threats to harm the occupant has been jailed.
Stewart Lea, 40, sent a host of texts to Carrie Anne Robinson on February 22, two days after their relationship had ended.
In messages which escalated in their tone, Lea vowed to harm a man she had previously admitted kissing.
Like her, that man lived in a block of flats at Lound Road from which Lea had been banned because of his drunken and volatile behaviour.
“Wait for the bloodbath,” Lea had stated to Miss Robinson. “I won’t rest until my fists are red.” He also threatened: “I am a fighter. I will put him in intensive care. If not, I will kill him and laugh.”
Lea then broke into the man’s while he was out, throwing his television into a shower and turning on the water, caused significant damage to a coffee table and smashed up a phone and watch. The man later told police of his upset that the phone had contained sentimental photographs of his late grandfather, to whom the watch had also belonged.
Lea committed another crime during a separate incident in Kendal, on April 24, when he was found in possession of a metal dumb bell bar in the street.
He later admitted burglary with intent to commit criminal damage, and offensive weapon possession.
Sarah Magill, defending, said Lea, of Kent Street, Kendal, was a “vulnerable adult” who had endured a difficult start to life, and been plagued by drug habit which he had latterly substituted with alcohol misuse.
“He asserts that but for the drink he would never have committed these two offences,” said Ms Magill. “In his own words ‘I am not a hardened criminal, I am just an idiot’.”
Judge Simon Medland QC jailed Lea for two years. “It was obvious from the text messages,” said Judge Medland, “that you had been building yourself up into a boiling rage against him, making all kinds of hair-raising threats of very serious violence, of damage and, indeed, a threat to kill.”
