(Image: PA)
A homeless man twice assaulted a volunteer trying to help him and threatened to stab hospital staff, York magistrates heard.
The incidents were part of hours of anti-social behaviour by Paul James Merritt, 40, in and close to York city centre.
Alison Whiteley, prosecuting, said it began with the 40-year-old causing problems in York Hospital’s Accident and Emergency department in the early hours of February 6 and having to be escorted out of the building and grounds by security staff. He appeared to be high on alcohol or drugs.
At the hospital boundary he produced what security workers believed was a knife and made stabbing movements with it. Following his arrest later that day, Merritt claimed the object was a ballpoint pen and denied making the stabbing motions.
Ms Whiteley said the crimes continued at the CareCent breakfast club for the homeless at the Central Methodist Church in St Saviourgate where Merritt fell asleep on a sofa at 9am and when a male helper put a mug of coffee by his side, Merritt opened his eyes and threw it over him.
He was asked to leave, said he would kill someone, then threatened to hit a woman volunteer and shoved her backwards against a wall, threw his mobile phone through a window and spat at the woman volunteer.
At 9.10am police located him in Tesco’s Goodramgate store where he was abusive to them and following his arrest, he dirtied a police van.
Throughout he was on a 20-week prison sentence suspended for a year on conditions including not breaking the law and doing six months' drug rehabilitation and 30 days' rehabilitative activities which Newcastle magistrates imposed last August.
Defence solicitor Neal Kutte said Merritt had recently arrived in York to start a new life away from problems in Newcastle and had been working on changing his behaviour since the offences.
Magistrates were told the law said they had to activate the suspended prison sentence unless they believed it would be unjust to do so.
They gave Merritt a 12-month conditional discharge for the York offences and did not make him serve the prison sentence but extended the suspended period by 12 months.
Merritt, 40, who gave his address as the Changing Lives hostel in Union Terrace, York, pleaded guilty to two assaults of the woman volunteer, threatening words or behaviour to the hospital security staff, disorderly conduct towards the police officers, criminal damage to a window and criminal damage to a police van.
Mr Kutte said: “It was a cocktail of factors that came together on one day when he committed these offences.”
Merritt had been addicted to heroin since he was 16 and because he was homeless and living on the streets was mixing with other drug users. That led to him taking drugs.
He had “significant emotional instability” and had been diagnosed with a psychosis when he was 18.
He was remorseful and apologised for his actions.