Carlisle man threatened to kill person he racially abused at bus station

A Carlisle man made racist threats to kill a man at the city’s bus station, and also verbally threatened a driver.

Bystanders, including children, were said to have been affected by the criminal conduct of 47-year-old Andrew John Jason Bell at Lonsdale Street on Tuesday evening.

Bell had approached one Thailand-born man of mixed ethnicity as he was sat with his partner. That man, a stranger, refused to rise to the verbal racist bait of Bell who, as he walked away, told him: “If I see you again I will kill you.”

The man feared Bell would launched an attack on the couple.

“He kept touching his pocket, intimating he had something in there,” he had told police. “I was extremely distressed by this. I do not know this man. I do not know what he is capable of doing.”

Carlisle Magistrates’ Court heard Bell had moved on to verbally abuse a bus driver who was waiting to board a vehicle, causing him to fear violence would be used. “Your days are numbered. You are on my list,” Bell had told him.

In court on Thursday, Bell admitted two public order offences — one being racially aggravated— and also causing criminal damage to a police cell having urinated on a wall. A district judge heard he had 135 previous convictions on his record for 216 past offences.

Defence lawyer Kate Hunter said Bell had intentionally used words to cause distress but added: “His intention was not to hurt anyone.”

Bell was handed an immediate 20-week jail term, and must pay £100 compensation to each of his two victims, along with £100 to the police for damage caused.

“You have an appalling record. A vast number of your offences, certainly in recent years, have been exactly the same as this,” district judge John Temperley told Bell. “There is no place at all for that kind of language.”

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