A LYDNEY man who produced a knife three times during drunken confrontations was told by a judge he was lucky not to be on a murder rap.
"When a drunken person produces a knife in a public place and starts waving it about the whole thing is a lottery,” Judge Jamie Tabor QC told James Hawkins.
“You could have ended up doing 30 years minimum, easily."
But the judge said he was pleased to hear that while in prison on remand awaiting sentence Hawkins, of High Street in Lydney, had ’pulled his socks up’ and taken educational courses.
Hawkins, 21, pleaded guilty to threatening Michael Dodwell with a knife in Hopes Close, Lydney, on October 17, 2014.
He also admitted damaging a snooker cue, light fitting, floor tiles and a garden bench belonging to Matthew Pillinger and pleaded guilty to having a knife in public in Forest Road, Bream on October 10, 2014 and in Lydney on May 3, 2015.
Prosecutor Julian Kesner said that on October 4 at the Cross Keys pub in Lydney, Hawkins got agitated, grabbed landlord Matthew Pillinger’s snooker cue from him and broke it. He then picked up a heavy iron table, raised it above his head and slammed it down.
Hawkins was jailed for 18 months.