Prison for Mansfield man who threatened to attack teenage girl with acid
A Mansfield man who threatened to attack a teenage girl with acid, “bury” her mum, and burn her house down when she ignored him has been jailed.
Luke Adams was initially friendly and suggested he had money for the 15-year-old but became threatening when she told him not to visit her in August last year, said prosecutor Matt Haynes.
"I am going to jail and I have nowt to lose,” Adams ranted in text messages. “You are going to end up dead. I am going to light you up. I am going to bury your f****** mum. When I find some acid you are getting it."
Judge Michael Auty KC said the messages were "deeply unpleasant" but “short-lived and there was no sexual motivation.
Nottingham Crown Court heard how Adams also barged into a man’s home with a knife and “wrestled” with him while an eight-year-old boy was present.
The man was knocked unconscious after falling down stairs and left feeling anxious and traumatised.
At the police station Adams spat into an officer's face when he was offered a cup of water.
The court heard he also spat into a police car, tried to ram his way through a magnetically-locked gate at a YMCA hostel and stole £88 of chocolate.
Andrew Wesley, mitigating, described Adams as "vulnerable" because of drug misuse and poor mental health, but there was "no evidence he would follow through on the threats”.
He was having a mental health breakdown and thought he was being pursued when he sought refuge in the house, he added.
“He has only spent a small time out of custody since he was a teenager,” Mr Wesley said. "He knows he cannot carry on like this.”
Adams, 33, of Blake Crescent, Mansfield, admitted harassment, threats to cause damage, affray, assaulting an emergency worker, common assault, criminal damage, and theft at previous hearings.
On Wednesday, Judge Auty told him his “wretched” upbringing had a profound effect on him and that alcohol and class A drug misuse exacerbated his mental health problems.
But the offences were aggravated because he was subject to two suspended sentences at the time and by his serious criminal record.
Adams received three years in prison and was banned from contacting his victim for ten years and from the YMCA for five.