A TEENAGER who has committed more than 60 offences in the last three years has been jailed for two years for threatening police with a knife.

Daniel Beadsworth, 19, of The Close, Clayton-le-Moors, has committed offences across East Lancashire including Accrington, Blackburn and Burnley despite being made subject to an ASBO in May 2005.

In his latest offences he sparked a call out to the Armed Response Unit after confronting officers with a large knife and saying: “Don’t come near me or I will use it.”

Burnley Crown Court heard that officers responded after Beardsworth lay in the road in front of a takeaway delivery car, then hit and kicked the driver, Zulfiquar Ali, claiming he had run him over.

Police went to his house and, after they were threatened, tried to immobilise him with Pava spray.

They failed and eventually had to let him leave the house, still carrying the knife.

He was eventually found by specialist armed-response officers and a police dog, hiding under a lorry and still holding the knife.

After his arrest, he spat at police officers as they tried to talk to him.

During his court hearings, Beardsworth also admitted a separate offence of stealing a £400 engagement ring from a customer while fitting windows at their home in Burnley.

He was caught when the couple fitted cameras, having suspected him when cash had also gone missing.

The court heard he had been working for a joinery firm run by his grandfather, who had been instrumental in bringing him up, but that he stole to buy cannabis, amphetamine and drink, and had "lost"

his teenage years, having spent almost five years in detention.

His record contains repeated convictions for theft, burglary, criminal damage and breaches of his ASBO, with incidents all over East Lancashire, but mainly in Hyndburn.

In court, Beardsworth admitted affray, possessing a knife, two counts of common assault and breaching his anti-social behaviour order, as well as the theft.

Recorder Patrick Field QC, passing sentence, said his behaviour was irritating and pathetic, and that the defendant had a total lack of respect for authority.

PC Brett Jackson, of Blackburn Police, was one of the officers who went to Beardsworth’s home after his attack on the delivery driver.

He said: “He was just not a nice lad at all. Some people you can talk to even when they’re in that sort of state, but not Beardsworth - he was a menace.”