A MAN who was walking around the streets armed with two weapons has avoided jail because he had never been in trouble before.

Keith Hoggart had been on a drinking binge with a friend when he believed he had something stolen from his Middlesbrough home.

Neighbours saw the 49-year-old marching from house to house with a carving knife in one hand and wooden baton in the other.

Armed police were called to the scene at 8.45am, and Hoggart immediately dropped what he was holding, a court heard.

He pleaded guilty to two charges of having an offensive weapon in a public place on May 29 at an earlier hearing.

At Teesside Crown Court, he was given an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, by Recorder Ben Nolan, QC.

The judge told him: "This was a disgraceful episode, fuelled by alcohol. You have to be very very careful in the future."

Andrew Turton, mitigating, said Hoggart, of Rothbury Road, Middlesbrough, "very much regretted" what had happened.

"This was a one-off incident," said Mr Turton, "fuelled by alcohol and events which took place in his house. He went about it the wrong way."