A grieving Carlisle man who caused a disturbance at the home of his ex-partner while holding a hammer has been sentenced by magistrates.
James McMillan, 33, went to his former girlfriend’s home address in the city on the late afternoon of November 20, and was described as banging and kicking her front door.
Macmillan went around to the back of the property, asking the woman to let him in, and was holding a hammer which he tapped on a pane of glass in the back door.
He returned to the front, threatened to put the hammer through her mother’s car and also poked a cigarette through the letterbox.
Police were informed and the woman later said she was scared to be in her own home. “I have never seen him behave like this before. His voice was different,” she had said. “I’m struggling to sleep, thinking he is going to come back.”
McMillan admitted a public order charge and was sentenced at Carlisle Magistrates’ Court this morning.
“Mr McMillan feels terrible about it,” said his lawyer, Mark Shepherd, of the offence. “The crushing effect of two successive bereavements prior to this, of people close to him, simply altered his mind. He didn’t recognise who he was at the time.”
Magistrates heard McMillan had been out of trouble for more than a decade before the incident. There had been no issues with the woman since, the court was told.
McMillan, of Raffles Avenue, was made subject to a 12-month community order and must complete both a 12-week night time curfew and a rehabilitation requirement. He was also banned from contacting the woman.
