Abusive Carlisle reveller vowed to ‘murder’ bouncers after Walkabout ejection

The mugshot of John Percival, who is pictured wearing a red, black and black checkered shirt. He has a ginger beard and brown spiky hair — John Percival

A man who threatened to “murder” bouncers during a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse after being ejected from a bar has been sentenced by magistrates.

Door staff had their attention drawn to 35-year-old John Joseph Percival by a female customer at Walkabout, Englishgate Plaza, just before midnight on January 3.

Percival was acting in a “drunken manner” towards other revellers. He was removed from the bar once, and then a second time after he climbed into the beer garden.

After an “intoxicated fall” into a lamppost, body cam footage captured Percival directing verbal abuse and graphic abuse and insults towards door staff.

“I’m going to murder them for what they have done to me tonight,” he could be heard saying. He made threats to cause physical harm, and also to burn the vehicle and home of one bouncer, warning he “wasn’t safe”.

“He then threatened to bring Gypsies to attack me,” the bouncer said in a statement. “At the time of the incident, I did believe the threats he was making towards me were true. I don’t come to work to be threatened in that manner.”

Percival, of Pennine Way, Carlisle, was said to have a “lengthy” criminal record. He was jailed for eight months in 2019 for glassing a bride-to-be outside a city bar just weeks before her wedding.

At Carlisle magistrates court today, Percival admitted a public order offence. He remembered being bought one drink but recalled little else, and was described as being “very remorseful” and “absolutely disgusted” by his conduct outside Walkabout. “I’m sorry about what’s happened,” he told magistrates.

It was the first time he had consumed alcohol since being released from the previous prison sentence, said a probation officer, and believed his drink was “spiked”.

Magistrates gave him a 12-month community order comprising a five-month electronically monitored nighttime curfew. He was also given an exclusion order banning him from Walkabout for the same length of time.