South Yorkshire man turns up at birthday party with imitation shotgun and threatens 'I'll blow your f****** head off'

Garry Atkinson produced the weapon after turning up at the garden of his girlfriend's Rotherham home for her 19th birthday, at around 7pm on May 20.

An argument was sparked between the couple and a bottle was thrown and smashed against a wall, before Atkinson told his friend, who was waiting in a taxi: "Pass me gun," prosecutor Kevin Jones told Sheffield Crown Court.

He waved the weapon around and said to his girlfriend’s brother: "I will kill you."

Terrified witnesses, including his girlfriend’s mother, described their fear at the sight of the weapon and their worry at what Atkinson would do next.

The court heard Atkinson and his girlfriend's brother had fought in the past and Atkinson “came off the worst."

He has seven previous convictions, including a charge of threatening behaviour from 2016, as well as failing to comply with community orders.

Clarkson Baptiste, mitigating, said: "He foolishly brandished this object to scare him.

"It wasn't capable of discharge. No one was in any danger of being shot. But he conveyed the threats in a very effective way."

When he said the weapon "just happened to be at hand," Judge Graham Reeds QC interrupted him and said: "You don't just drive around with something in a bag that looks like a shotgun."

The weapon was not recovered.

Mr Baptiste said Atkinson's upbringing had been troubled, but he was "relatively lightly convicted," with "nothing of this gravity on his record."

Atkinson, 21, of Charles Street, Swinton, Rotherham, pleaded guilty to possession of an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.

The judge told him: "Had this been a real firearm, the sentence would have been five years. It was a realistic imitation that was used to cause real fear.

He sentenced him to two years in prison.

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