A MAN threw a car battery through the window of his girlfriend's home and damaged her father's car with an air rifle, a court heard yesterday.

Michael Sanderson, 31, admitted possessing a firearm, two charges of damaging property, two of assault with intent to resist arrest and was found guilty by a jury of threatening behaviour.

Shaun Dryden, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court the incident happened on Christmas Eve 1999 when Sanderson, of Stockton Street, Hartlepool, was found outside the home of Rebecca Harrison, with an air gun.

When the family went inside, he said, Sanderson smashed the headlights of Miss Harrison's father's car, with the air gun, then threw a car battery through a window of the house, spilling acid.

When the police arrived, Sanderson, he said, was at first compliant but then began to struggle violently, pulling himself and an officer over a fence and kicking another on the shin.

Ian West, mitigating, said Sanderson had spent seven-and-a-half months in jail on remand. He said Sanderson had become abusive with the police after something was shouted from the house.

"Someone seemed to call him a murderer," he said.

Sanderson was given ten months, which meant immediate release.