A NOTORIOUS Carlisle nuisance has been jailed again after he added three more upsetting offences of antisocial behaviour to his 216 previous crimes.

After hearing that 47-year-old Andrew Bell racially abused a young man and threatened him before making similar threats to a bus driver, a district judge told the defendant he seemed incapable of learning that such behaviour is unacceptable.

Bell, who is homeless, admitted two public order offences of using threatening behaviour and causing criminal damage to a police cell.

Prosecutor George Shelley said that following his release from his last jail term, Bell went to Carlisle’s Lonsdale Street bus station at 6pm on April 2, and began causing trouble, swearing at numerous members of the public.

He then began targeting a young man of Thai extraction who was at the station with his girlfriend, repeatedly shouting at him.

As the man tried to ignore Bell, he turned to a bystander and said: “I hate it when they do that; when they ignore me." When the man asked Bell to leave him alone, the defendant directed upsetting racial abuse at him while misidentifying his ethnicity.

Refusing to react, the man began to walk away. “As he walked away,” said Mr Shelley, “the defendant said: ‘If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

Moments later, Bell turned his attention to a bus driver who was walking past him, telling the man: “You’re on my list.” The man immediately feared violence. The first victim also feared both he and his partner would be attacked.

“The abuse caused me to feel distressed,” said the man. “I just wanted him to leave me alone and when I wouldn’t rise to his behaviour he began targeting other people.”

There were children in the area when Bell was shouting at people, making them feel uncomfortable. When he was interviewed by the police, Bell admitted what he had done and apologised.

However, while he was at the police station, he deliberately urinated on the wall of his cell. The court heard that Bell’s previous 216 offences include 48 public order offences.

News and Star: Andrew Bell, once described as Carlisle's Number One Nuisance.

Kate Hunter, defending, said that Bell had not intended to hurt anybody, but he had used the words reported intentionally “to get a reaction.”

“But he did not target those people specifically,” said the lawyer.

She said Bell was in a repeating cycle of being jailed and released early from sentences, in part because of issues with prison capacity and when he is back in the community he has no funds. He also had mental health issues.

Bell wanted District Judge John Temperley to consider suspending the jail term if the sentence was to be one of custody, said Miss Hunter.

The judge told Bell: “You have an appalling record and a vast number of your offences – certainly in recent years – have been exactly this type of abusive and threatening behaviour and racially aggravated behaviour.”

There could be no alternative to immediately custody.

The judge added: “You are nearly 50 years old, and you think it is appropriate to use the kind of language you used towards the complainant in this case. There is no place at all for that kind of language; you are old enough to know that.

“You have been in court multiple times for these sorts of offences, and you don’t seem to learn any lessons.”

He jailed Bell for 20 weeks. Bell must also pay £100 compensation to each of the victims and £100 towards the bill for professionally cleaning the cell he urinated in.