Drug addict threatened to burn down his mother's Hartlepool home after believing 'there were people in the loft'

The case was heard at Teesside Crown Court.

Offshore worker Jamie Buglass, 33, had been threatening to burn down his mother's home insisting that there were people in the loft.

Police searched the loft and even allowed him to see it for himself but he but he launched into a violent struggle with them, Teesside Crown Court was told.

The officers pinned him to the ground using a restraining spray on him but he attempted to bite one of them, said prosecutor Emma Watson.

The judge ordered Buglass to be closely monitored for future drug use, despite his claim that he was now free of them.

Judge Jonothan Carroll told him: “You have spent most of your adult life with your brain addled by cocaine.

"If you want to do that to yourself that is your business, but if it affects other people that is my business."

Miss Atkinson said Buglass's violent behaviour on August 13 last year in Simpson Grove, Hartlepool, was in breach of a 10-month suspended jail sentence for similar behaviour towards his mother.

She added: “On the latest occasion he was under the influence of crack cocaine and she was worried he was suffering a psychotic episode.

"When police arrived at the address she was distressed and he was inside pacing around and certain that there were people in the loft.

"Two officers were there and one of them checked the loft and was satisfied that it was clear and that there was no-one in there.

"They allowed him to go into the loft to calm him down. He repeatedly insisted that there were people in there and that the officers were wrong.

"He was pacing up and down the street and he was agitated. His mother said that he had threatened to burn the house down with a lighter.

She said that police were concerned about a risk to other residents, and they tried to control him.

There was a violent struggle in which they had to pin him to the ground using a restraint spray as he attempted to bite one of them.

Stephen Constantine, defending, said that Buglass was currently on furlough from an MoD job in Portsmouth and he had hopes of contract work in Norway.

Buglass, of Caxton Grove, Hartlepool, was given a six-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months, with 50 days rehabilitation requirements, 150 hours unpaid work, and £500 compensation to the police officer and £25 fine after he pleaded guilty to threats to destroy property and resisting a police officer.

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