POLICE called to a top-floor flat were confronted on the stairs by a Frenchman waving a 3ft long samurai sword, a court heard yesterday.

Karen Smoult-Hawtree, prosecuting, told Harrogate magistrates that Julien Guillaume Mercier was "going berserk" on the staircase, while inside the flat, in Westmoreland Street, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, were his mother, his French girlfriend and the couple's baby.

Mercier, 26, began to threaten the police, who shepherded the women and the baby to the safety of their vehicle, then confronted them with the sword, banging it on the banister and making more threats.

When he discarded his weapon, he took up a fighting stance and police were forced to use CS gas on him. But it failed to subdue him and he ran along the street, pursued by police.

Mrs Smoult-Hawtree said Mercier was caught and taken to Harrogate police station, where he again became violent, kicking PC Andrew Budimer in the leg and spitting at him.

When Mercier, of Knaresborough Road, Harrogate, pleaded guilty to affray and assault, his solicitor, Geoffrey Rogers, said he had no real memory of the incident until the gas was used on him.

Presiding magistrate Hugh Simpson ordered probation reports on Mercier and bailed him for sentence on September 12.

Editor’s note: We were contacted by the defendant’s son in June 2020, who told us that his father had been suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time of the offence and later took his own life. His son said: “He was a good man with a big heart who was misunderstood”.