A man has been sentenced to jail in Griffith Local Court after he stood in his neighbour’s front yard armed with a kitchen knife and called for her to come outside.
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The woman watched the terrifying scene unfold from her lounge room, as the horror played out in her own front yard.
“Get out here, I’ll show you what I can do,” Douglas Atkinson yelled out, as he pulled the knife, which had a 15cm long blade, from his pocket back in December.
Atkinson appeared in Griffith Local Court on Friday, March 24 over the incident, charged with stalking and intimidating with the intention of causing his victim fear of physical harm, armed with the intent to commit an indictable offence and wielding a knife in a public place.
He pleaded guilty to all three offences and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, with a non-parole period of 12 months by local court magistrate Geoffrey Hiatt.
He will be eligible for release on December 22, 2017.
According to police facts the drama had begun early on the morning of December 23, 2016 when at 9.30am the woman heard shouting from outside her home.
Opening her door she saw Atkinson, who was her neighbour at the time, hosing his lawn.
When she saw it was just him she immediately went back inside.
But just moments later she heard him call out to her from just outside her home.
“Get out here,” he yelled.
The woman said she didn’t get up because she knew who it was calling out to her.
From her seat in the lounge room she could see Atkinson and the silver blade of the knife as he pulled it from his right pocket.
Atkinson stood, slashing at the air in front of him with the knife while facing the woman’s home.
He kept repeating “get out here, I’ll show you’s [sic] what I can do.”
After 10 minutes he then turned on a light pole on a median strip in the middle of the street, using his knife to slash at it.
The woman could hear the sounds of the knife hitting the pole from her home.
Shutting her front door, she called police while Atkinson returned to his home and continued to water his lawn.
Police arrived at the woman’s home by 9.47am and spoke with Atkinson, finding the knife he had used lying on his front lawn.
While in police custody Atkinson said he had been drinking that morning and usually behaved like this when intoxicated.
