A TEENAGER who was wandering around Burnley with a knife just weeks after being given a suspended sentence for turning up at a former girlfriend’s home armed with a machete and demanding to know who she had in the house has been sent to custody.

Preston Crown Court heard that at around 4.20pm on March 19 police were called to Abinger Street after eyewitnesses reported seeing a man with a knife.

Prosecuting Hanifa Patel said police then got a report that the male had left the cricket club and after a 15 minute search defendant Tyler Jenneys was found in a traffic island in Briercliffe Road.

Ms Patel said the officers described how Jenneys did not look steady on his feet and when they pulled up in a nearby street he walked towards their car.

PC Lee Ingham was the first to get out of the police car and, as he did, he called out the defendant’s name.

Ms Patel said: “At this point the defendant put his hands in the air with his palms open as though to surrender. The officer then instructed the defendant to keep his hands where he could see them and it was at this point the defendant momentarily went against that instruction by putting his right hand into his tracksuit bottoms pocket and pulling out a silver kitchen knife.

“He immediately dropped that knife onto the grass verge and put up his hands again with his palms open.”

Police seized the knife and searched Jenneys for further weapons but didn’t find any.

Ms Patel said: “He was described by the officers as looking very paranoid, turning his head repeatedly from side to side. One of the officers asked him what the matter was and he said he wanted to be sectioned. He told the officers he had no mental health issues but had taken cocaine over the last 24 hours and he believed that had made him paranoid.”

Jenneys was arrested and when he was still on the street his grandmother arrived and told officers that he was under the influence of drugs.

Jenneys, 18, of Amersham Grove, Burnley, pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon in a public place.

The court heard committing that offence put him in breach of a six month suspended sentence he received in February.

That related to an incident when he turned up at the home of his 30-year-old former partner, Sheree Lloyd, wearing a balaclava and carrying a machete with a 60cm blade.

Claiming that he had been goaded by Ms Lloyd saying she had somebody else in her bed, he caused £300 of damage to a door panel by kicking it.

This latest offence of possessing an offensive weapon meant Jenneys was now subject to the mandatory minimum sentence provision of six months.

Defending, Philip Holden said the author of a pre-sentence report believed his client had undiagnosed mental health problems, including autism and depression, and has a level of maturity far below his chronological age.

Mr Holden said; “It is plain that Tyler Jenneys is a young man with very many problems.”

Sentencing Jenneys to 266 days in a young offender institution, Judge David Potter: “I accept there was no effort on your part to conceal the knife from the police and there was no threat to the police officers by you taking the knife out of your tracksuit bottoms in order to drop it on the floor. Notwithstanding that it is a serious offence. It is additionally serious because of that previous suspended sentence on which occasion you would have been told that if you committed any further offence, particularly in relation to knife crime, the suspended sentence is in all likelihood going to be activated and that’s what I’m afraid is going to happen today.”