A knife-wielding man who went on an early-morning tyre-slashing spree has been jailed.

Philip Cecil, 50, left a trail of dozens of stabbed tyres, causing more than £5,500 damage, Colchester magistrates heard.

Sentencing him to six months imprisonment, Barry Hawes, chairman of the bench, said Cecil was responsible for "an appalling number of deliberate and malicious attacks on vehicles".

Cecil, of Victoria Street, Harwich, had been found guilty of a total of 66 charges of criminal damage and possessing an article with a pointed blade at an earlier trial.

He had denied all of them.

Shini Cooksley, prosecuting yesterday, said Cecil had been arrested after being spotted by resident Christopher Wilcocks in Nelson Road, Harwich.

She said he first saw him duck down behind one car and then another.

He could hear hissing, and then went out and shouted at him.

Trevor Linn, mitigating, said Cecil still maintained he was innocent of the offences of which he had been convicted.

The incident, he said, had been hanging over his head for a substantial period of time, and had taken "a considerable toll of his mental and financial well-being".

Since his last conviction for criminal damage in 2000, he had managed to keep himself out of trouble, said Mr Linn.

Cecil was sentenced to three months in prison on each for the first two incidents of criminal damage to run consecutively, plus three months in prison for the offence of having a bladed article, to run concurrently.

Published Tuesday, July 1, 2003

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