Sheffield 'menace' battled with neighbours, threatened them with axe and lobbed bricks at cars

Josh Hammond shouted he was going to firebomb his neighbours' house and "do their kids" before hurling a paving slab at their front door, on Raisen Hall Road, at 4.30am, on July 14.

When a woman came outside to confront him, the 21-year-old grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to the floor, prosecutor Amy Earnshaw told Sheffield Crown Court, on Thursday.

Her partner came out to help and "threw a number of punches," she said, which made Hammond release the woman, but her finger was fractured in the melee.

Hammond came out of his house with an axe in his hand at 12pm the same day and made more threats.

"When he was told the police were coming he went back inside," said Ms Earnshaw.

CCTV showed him making the sign of a gun before throwing bricks and damaging a Vauxhall Zafira and a Citroen C3.

He later denied appearing with the axe and told police they must have seen him chopping wood in his garden.

In a statement, the woman Hammond injured said she was worried for her children.

"I am scared of being in the house," she said. "I don't want to live here anymore. Josh has already hurt one of my children in the past."

Another neighbour described him as a menace who makes people stay inside.

The court heard he has six convictions and was jailed for eight months for assaulting an emergency worker.

Rebecca Tanner, mitigating, said: "It's no surprise that he was challenged about his behaviour. It's an ugly incident."

She said that Hammond, who pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, criminal damage and affray, suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and is in the lowest percentile for intelligence.

Judge Robert Moore QC sentenced him to 11 months, but noted Hammond will be released before Christmas as he has already served more than ten months on remand. A five year restraining order was imposed.

But he warned him: “If you do the same thing again you will be banged up for much longer."