An “out of control” axeman stopped traffic and threatened to hit a terrified motorist and youths on a canal towpath in Skipton, York Crown Court heard.

Rocky Gordon Parker, 33, also had the weapon and a lock knife with the blade fixed in the open position in a park near a children’s play area.

“You were out of control of yourself and you were running around with these potentially lethal weapons,” Recorder Andrew Stubbs QC told Parker as he jailed him for a year and nine months.

Parker, of Barkston Avenue in Chapelfields, York, pleaded guilty to four offences of having a knife or an axe in public and one of skipping police bail.

Peter Byrne, prosecuting, said a van driving down Otley Road, Skipton at 8.30pm on May 2, had to stop because Parker was standing in the middle of the road, with an axe in his hand. Parker walked up to the vehicle.

“He was shouting and swearing to the effect he was going to get somebody,” said Mr Byrne. As the terrified van driver drove off, Parker hit the road surface with his axe.

A fortnight later, at 6.45pm, he confronted a group of youths on the towpath of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal with an axe, saying “I am going to stick it in your back, in your head, you b……..”, said Mr Byrne. Parker then tucked the axe in his jacket and walked off.

Police found Parker in Aireville Park, Skipton, shortly afterwards by some trees near children’s swings, holding the axe. He threw it in the undergrowth as they approached. In his pocket they found a lock knife with the blade in the open position.

He claimed he had forgotten he had the knife and said nothing about the axe.

He was bailed and when he failed to attend at a police station on June 29, was circulated as wanted. On July 21, police spotted him on Gale Lane, Acomb, just after 1pm with a kitchen knife in his pocket. Again he claimed he forgot he had it.

For him, Mark Partridge said: “There is no good explanation as to why he had the objects other than his misconception as to why he was carrying them.”

Parker had thought he had gone out with the axe to cut firewood and then gone off at a “completely different tangent” and commit the offences. He was an alcoholic and had been in drink on each occasion.

Since being remanded in custody, he had detoxified and started working on tackling his drink problem.