Drug-fuelled Waterloo Road star’s machete threat to family
ACTOR JAILED FOR ‘TERRIFYING INCIDENT’ DURING WHICH HE SMASHED UP HOME
A FORMER TV star threatened a family with a machete and smashed the windows of their home during a drink and drug-fuelled tirade.
Craig Fitzpatrick, who starred in BBC drama Waterloo Road, turned up to his victims’ home with his cousin after a volatile ‘family dispute’ caused ‘emotions to run high’, a judge said.
Speaking to Fitzpatrick, who appeared via video link at Forest Bank prison in Salford, judge Recorder Mark Ford said: “I am aware you are an actor. It has been said that you have been unable to fulfil your potential because of other factors, not least your use of alcohol and other substances and propensity to aggression.”
Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard that Fitzpatrick, from Oldham, was ‘highly intoxicated and under the influence of drugs’ when he arrived with the weapon on August 27 this year.
“What followed was... a digressive and terrifying incident,” the judge told the court.
A neighbour saw the 34-year-old actor strike the front door of the victims’ home with the 18-inch blade.
He went inside and said he wanted to speak to a man who lived there, while ‘swinging the machete’, the court heard.
He told a woman in the house that if the ‘family were seen’ on their estate ‘they would be dead’. The woman was able to ‘push him out’ using a broom.
“You then used the machete to smash windows of the house. The occupants would have been terrified”, Recorder Ford said.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the family said they ‘ no longer felt safe in their own home’.
The court heard that when Fitzpatrick went to a police station to hand himself in, he indicated that he had himself been ‘threatened’.
Lisa Boocock, prosecuting, said: “(He said) he had gone to the house and had been hit and assaulted by the family.”
The court heard that Fitzpatrick had 27 convictions for 49 offences.
In 2003, he was convicted of possession of a bladed article.
His other previous convictions included affray, robbery and burglary.
David James, defending, said: “It is not simply an act that occurred out of the blue, or that he instigated himself.
“He is a man who isn’t a stranger to the court. He is a man who has a very different mindset from the past. He can’t change the past but he is trying to work towards the future. He has the maturity to accept his wrongdoings.”
Fitzpatrick was sentenced to a total of 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to possession of a bladed article and affray.