WAITING for a friend to join him, John Phillpotts was shaken when a bare chested stranger wielding a meat cleaver tried to open his car door.

"There was a tug-o-war with Mr Phillpotts instinctively trying to shut the door while 34-year-old Daniel Kondrakiewicz pulled it with one hand and brandished the silver meat cleaver, with a 51cm blade, with the other," prosecutor Paul Rowsell told Truro Crown Court on Wednesday, December 1.

Mr Phillpotts sounded his horn really hard and when his friend, Darren Jackson, recognised his neighbour and shouted, Polish born Kondrakiewicz put up his arms, became very and apologetic and walked to his nearby home in Kensey Valley Meadow, Launceston.

Kondrakiewicz was before the court for sentence, having pleaded guilty to the possession of a bladed article in a public place and to using threatening, abusive words and behaviour with intent to cause fear of violence on October 23 last.

Defending, Barry Hilliard said that Kondrakiewicz had been very drunk. He had come to this country to build a better life for his family, and had found accommodation and work for them both and also his brother, but be was having difficulties because of his separation from his wife and with the courts in gaining access to his son. That day he had lost his job because he turned up drunk for work.

Judge Ian Leeming QC commented that it must have been very frightening for Mr Phillpotts and jailed Kondrakiewicz for 40 weeks and ordered that the 37 days he had already been in custody should count towards the sentence.