'Out of control' 24-year-old man armed with shard of glass and tasered by police receives jail sentence
An 'out of control' man who was tasered by police has received a 20-month jail sentence at Swansea Crown Court.
Nicky Cantona Clement, 24, was tasered by officers on June 5 after he wrecked his mother's home, armed himself with a seven-inch shard of glass and ran from police.
Swansea Crown Court heard how the chain of events had begun with Clement being verbally abusive toward his mother at her home in the Sandfields area of Port Talbot.
Clement admitted criminal damage, a public order offence, and two counts of threatening another with a bladed article.
He received a discounted sentence because of his guilty pleas. He will serve up to half of his 20 month jail sentence in custody before being released on license.
The prosecution said it all started when Clement began calling his mother "dirty" and "lazy" and swore at her.
This abusive behaviour continued for hours until eventually, Clement "lost his temper" and began destroying items in the house, like the TV. He also threw a laptop out of an upstairs window and a mirror down the stairs.
He then leaned out of a window and shouted at a passerby, challenging them to a fight and then telling them he was going to rape them and their family.
Clement then proceeded to leave the house but not before picking up a seven-inch shard of glass from the mirror he had broken.
At this point police officers were called. They managed to track Clement down to the street where his grandmother lives.
Just two days prior to this, Clement had pleaded guilty to threatening his 80-year-old grandmother with a pair of scissors and a garden rake. He had also damaged some of her belongings.
Clement had been bailed by magistrates for this but the prosecution said he was not supposed to go to his grandmother's house again.
Police officers managed to corner Clement near a school but he continued to behave aggressively. He took off his dressing gown and spat at officers as he held the glass shard to his own chest.
He also began "shouting incoherently" at people living nearby who had come out to see what was going on.
Officers can be heard in video footage of the stand-off repeatedly telling Clement to put down the blade of glass.
The prosecutor told the court that it was only when the defendant "marched towards" officers "grunting and snarling" that they discharged their tasers.
Clement was arrested and later told police he had been in a "frenzied state" and had taken the shard of glass to harm himself.
His defence said it was clear that events from Clement's "childhood have shaped the way he has turned out". They argued that the defendant's recognition of this and his issues with drug use meant that there was hope of rehabilitation.
Judge Paul Thomas QC told Clement he had behaved "disgracefully" towards his mother and had been "out of control".
While acknowledging that Clement had had a "very unhappy childhood" and was experiencing mental health issues, he asserted that Clement posed too much of a risk to be managed in the community. Because he pleaded guilty, Clement received a 15% discount and was sentenced to 20 months in prison. This discount would have been larger had Clement not refused to leave his cell for an earlier court appearance.
He will serve up to half of that sentence in jail before being released on licence.