THE uncle of a man stabbed to death has been jailed for just over a year after threatening a worker with a machete.

Patrick Mulcahy, 32, said his nephew Jamie Mulcahy, who died a year after being knifed in a Bacup brawl, was ‘like a brother to him’, and he had struggled to come to terms with his death, and the court cases which followed.

In the aftermath of the second trial, which saw Jonathan Rigby jailed for 15 years for Jamie’s manslaughter, Patrick Mulcahy started drinking heavily, Preston Crown Court heard.

At 9.30am on January 12, he approached a building site in Thornbank, Bacup, and started shouting at scaffolder Joseph Saxon, telling him he wanted to fight and making gun gestures.

Mulcahy was told to leave but returned a short while later, carrying a 12-inch knife, shouting: “I’ll smash you all up.”

He dropped the knife, but picked it back up, lunging at the workmen – who had picked up a scaffolding post in self-defence.

Mulcahy then walked away, shouting that a group of men were trying to attack him.

He pleaded guilty to making threats with a knife, along with a charge of theft of two bottles of vodka from Morrisons on February 6, and racially abusing a security guard who tried to stop him.

At the time of the incident on the building site, Mulcahy was subject to a suspended prison sentence, which was activated as a result of his offending.

The judge jailed Mulcahy, of Tong Lane, Bacup, for 28 weeks for possession of a bladed article in a public place, two weeks for racially aggravated harassment of the shop security guard and activated 24 weeks of the suspended sentence, totalling 54 weeks behind bars.

Judge Ian Leeming, sentencing, said: “I have listened to your mitigation – your grief and your addiction to alcohol.”