A TEENAGER who wrongly believed his ex-girlfriend had been raped pushed an imitation handgun into the face of her alleged attacker in a crowded supermarket, a court heard yesterday.

Daniel Reed, 18, of Consett, County Durham, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment at a youth detention centre for illegally possessing an imitation handgun and a knife.

Newcastle Crown Court heard how shoppers had been badly frightened at the time of the incident, in the Safeway supermarket, in Consett, last December.

Christopher Williamson, defending, said Reed had become obsessed with the wrong assumption that his former girlfriend, Rachel Watson, had been raped by Philip Southern.

Miss Watson and Mr Southern had attended a party together in April last year. Miss Watson had become extremely drunk and later came to believe, wrongly, that she may have been raped.

Mr Williamson said: "On December 29 last year Philip Southern was working at Safeway when Reed came in and put a handgun to his head and said: 'Admit it.' Mr Southern thought the gun was real. He said 'no' and ran away, believing he was about to be shot."

Stanley Anderson, defending, said Reed was of previous good character, he was unlikely to offend again and had been badly bullied while in custody and that the clothes he wore in court had been ripped by bullies that day.

The court heard Reed's last known address was Castington Young Offenders' Institution, in Northumberland.