A disgruntled customer took an axe to his local phone shop and threatened to “smash up” the store in a rage after claiming he had been sold a faulty handset, a court has heard.
Raymond Barrowes, 62, armed himself with the weapon for a confrontation with the shopkeeper, angry that his phone had malfunctioned and he had been told it could not be fixed for free.
Barrowes took an axe - wrapped in a blue plastic bag – into Bilal Communications in East Street, Walworth, south London, and began to shout threats aimed at the business.
“I’m going to smash your shop up and I’m going to get my people”, he told the shop worker.
At Inner London crown court on Thursday, Barrowes was spared a spell behind bars as a judge passed an 18-week sentence but agreed to suspend it for 18 months.
“You got into a state, you were angry, and you brought with you an axe”, said judge Nathaniel Rudolf KC.
He ordered Barrowes to attend 35 rehabilitation sessions, he must follow a 9pm to 6am curfew for three months, and he is banned from buying knives for the next year-and-a-half.
The court heard Barrowes bought a second-hand phone but returned to the shop a few weeks later, on December 14 last year, to complain it “was not working properly and demanding they fix it”.
“The shopkeeper, Aminullah Hajilawah, offered him another handset as a replacement”, said the prosecutor.
She said he “explained the damage was not covered under warrantee, and he would have to charge a £150 fee to fix the phone”, but Barrowes then “became angry and began shouting at the victim, asking for his money back”.
To try to defuse the row, the shopkeeper offered Barrowes a handset worth £130 as a replacement. But two days later, he returned to the shop again, complaining he had been swindled with a cheaper replacement handset.
The court heard the shopkeeper “explained the original phone was damaged, and was not worth the original price that he paid for it”.
He tried to return the original damaged phone, but Barrowes stormed off before returning 20 minutes later with “a long black handled item sticking out of his coat pocket”.
The shop worker “believed it to be a knife”, and called police when another business owner intervene to try to calm down Barrowes.
CCTV caught him in a nearby shop taking the axe out of his pocket and placing it on the counter.
Meredoc McMinn, mitigating for Barrowes, said he has known the shop owner for 11 years and considered him a friend.
“He does accept what he did was wrong, and he regrets no longer have a friendship with this gentleman”, he said.
The court heard Barrowes has mental health issues, including depression, and has 67 convictions for 130 offences on his record, including incidents of violence.
The judge agreed to spare him an automatic six-month sentence which could have been imposed as he has a past conviction for possessing an offensive weapon, because that case dates back to 1978.
The judge also noted that a probation officer had assessed Barrowes as posing “some risk to the public”, but he said there was also remorse over the phone shop bust-up and a good chance of rehabilitation.
Barrowes, who also lives on East Street in Walworth, pleaded guilty to having an article with a blade or a point.
