A DOUBLE siege man who held his ex-partner hostage and made terrifying threats to slit her throat, while on bail for another police stand-off, has been jailed.
Luke Entwistle, 21, kept Emma Brown, 20, prisoner for 24 hours, some of it at knifepoint, after he had been released following trouble just months before.
A few months earlier, he had taken to the roof of the Salvation Army in Blackburn after slashing a man with a knife and cutting his face, Burnley Crown Court was told.
Last December 30, around a dozen armed police, ambulances and the fire brigade surrounded the defendant's then home in Escott Gardens, Burnley, when Entwistle threatened to hurt Ms Brown if anybody went inside.
The area was cordoned off, police dog handlers were called in and residents were warned to stay in their homes or only leave with a police escort.
Ms Brown, who had shared the house with Entwistle until she had finished their on/off relationship on December 22, emerged physically unharmed on New Year's Eve, after trained negotiators went to the scene. The pair have a child together.
The hearing was told that during the melee in Blackburn, which followed a disagreement between Entwis- tle and another person at the Heaton Street hostel, the defendant had a knife.
He refused to come down for 12 hours and threw stones at people watching but was eventually arrested.
Entwistle, now of no fixed address, was yesterday sentenced for the two ‘bizarre’ incidents, after earlier admitting false imprisonment, making threats to kill and affray involving the Burnley siege, and assault causing actual bodily harm and affray relating to the melee last June.
He was jailed for three years and 10 months.
The defendant, said to have been suffering ‘adult-type ADHD’ has 66 offences on his record, and first broke the law when he was 11.
Guy Mathieson, prosecuting, said the defendant was seen holding a knife towards the victim, who is from Darwen He told officers: “She will get it. I will cut her throat”.
Police had made 49 calls to speak to the defendant throughout the 25 hours. James Heyworth, defending, said: “Luke is very much of the view that something was clearly wrong with his mental health. He gets to a certain point, and I suppose, one might say, he flips.
“It’s extreme behaviour and it's Mr Entwistle himself who has identified that something is not right. He's awaiting an appointment with the prison psychiatrist.”
Sentencing, Judge Andrew Woolman, said police were ‘concerned about what you might do because your previous behaviour had given them every cause for concern’.
He said: “Your reaction was extreme and extremely disturbing.”
The defendant also received a three year restraining order.
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