A DRUNK hotel guest brandished an axe after opening his room door to a police officer whom he had told moments earlier: “I will take your head off.”

Police were called to the Glen Rothay Hotel at Rydal, near Ambleside, at around midday on August 19.

“This was following reports of a male who was refusing to leave his room after check-out,” prosecutor Matthew Hopkins told Carlisle Crown Court.

That man was homeless Darren Marsh, a heavily-convicted 52-year-old who had knocked back a bottle of vodka before and after breakfast.” “When officers arrived the defendant was in his room. He was shouting,” said Mr Hopkins.

As two PCs asked him to open the door, Marsh was verbally abusive.

Mr Hopkins told the court: “An officer tried to open the door with a key but the defendant secured it somehow. The defendant said: ‘open it, open it, I will take your head off'.

“One officer went to check for an alternative way of opening the door, leaving (his female colleague). The defendant then opened the door. The officer walked through. She saw the defendant holding an axe up.

“She perceived it was pointing towards her head. In her statement she said she feared the defendant would strike her with the axe.”

As she tried to take hold of the weapon, Marsh pulled it away. The female PC’s colleague returned and they took Marsh to the floor, removing the axe from him.

In that struggle, the female officer suffered pain and swelling to knuckles on her hand.

Footage from the incident was played in court as Marsh was sentenced having admitted assaulting an emergency worker and threatening another with an offensive weapon in a private place. An officer was heard saying 'put that down now' as Marsh held the axe during the incident.

The court heard Marsh, of no fixed address, was in breach of a conditional discharge issued weeks early for a drunk and disorderly offence. His overall record spanned four decades and contained 98 previous crimes.

Anthony Parkinson, mitigating, said the weapon was never raised in any way, nor deliberately pointed at the officer’s head.

“In the heat of the moment she may have perceived that. One sees on the footage very clearly he is holding it in his hand at the point the police enter the room,” said Mr Parkinson.

Recorder Julian Shaw, passing sentence, accepted that. But the judge told Marsh: “Nevertheless it is an axe and you were confronting two police officers.”

Recorder Shaw imposed an immediate 12-month prison sentence.