A drunk Lakes hotel guest who brandished an axe having made threats to police has been given an immediate 12-month jail term.
PCs went to the Glen Rothay Hotel at Rydal, near Ambleside, at around midday on August 19 amid reports 52-year-old Darren Marsh was refusing to leave his room after the check-out time.
Carlisle Crown Court heard heavily-convicted Marsh had knocked back a bottle of vodka before and after breakfast that morning.
As officers arrived, Marsh was in his room, shouting. He was verbally abusive and refused to answer the door.
Initially Marsh was heard to say “I will break your head off” and then “I will take your head off.”
Marsh then opened the door to a female PC, who saw the defendant holding an axe up.
“She perceived it was pointing towards her head,” said Matthew Hopkins, prosecuting. “In her statement she said she feared the defendant would strike her with the axe.”
As she tried to take hold of the weapon, Marsh pulled it away but was disarmed as a colleague came to her aid and they took him to the floor. In the struggle, the female officer suffered pain and swelling to knuckles on her hand.
At the time Marsh, of no fixed address, was in breach of a conditional discharge issued weeks early for a drunk and disorderly offence. His record spanned four decades and contained 98 previous crimes.
Anthony Parkinson, mitigating, said the weapon was never raised in any way, nor deliberately pointed at the officer’s head. He added: “In the heat of the moment she may have perceived that. One sees on the footage very clearly he is holding it in his hand at the point the police enter the room.”
Recorder Julian Shaw, passing sentence, accepted that. But the judge told Marsh: “Nevertheless it is an axe and you were confronting two police officers.”
Recorder Shaw imposed an immediate 12-month prison sentence.
