What ?

At first this looked insane :

A teenage golfer who has represented Wales has been sentenced to eight months youth custody for possessing an imitation firearm. Mold Crown Court heard police were called after Keith Torrence was seen in a car holding what looked like a gun.

The weapon turned out to be cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun.

Torrence, 19, from Wrexham, who has represented Wales both at home and abroad, admitted affray and possessing an imitation firearm in public. The court heard how members of the public and staff at shops in Wrexham town centre became concerned when they saw Torrence sitting in his car, holding the "gun" one afternoon last summer.

Another adult and children were in the back of the vehicle. A witness in a cake shop told police how he realised that he had been seen - and seemed to move the pistol around even more. Another witness heard someone in the car telling him to stop it because he was frightening the children.

What ? Waving a toy gun around inside a car gets you eight months ? Thank heavens sentencing was lighter in the long gone days when my brother and I were waving these around Redcar. What would have happened had he one of these ?

But it seems the BBC are, not for the first time, a little light on the actualite.

Judge John Rogers QC told him the possession of a firearm, whether real or not, caused fear and distress among those who saw it.

Torrence had caused such distress members of the public called the police, he said.

A custodial sentence was inevitable and he had considered whether it could be suspended.

But he had committed the offence while subject to a community sentence for affray, and the day after his arrest for the imitation firearm he had been involved in an offence of battery.

“It is quite inappropriate now for me to again impose a sentence which does not involve immediate custody,” he said.

The affray conviction was his third and he was supposedly serving a sentence' "in the community". While I doubt he'd have gone down but for the 'gun', it looks more like it was the straw that broke the judge's back.


(and another story from the Daily Post - showing journalistic invention at its best :

Shockingly, when the door of an industrial freezer was opened in the basement of Llandudno’s Sakura Japanese and Korean restaurant, officers found the sleeping quarters of the Sakura’s chef – an illegal immigrant from China.

They opened the door and found him ? Very shocking, because :

Officers were amazed to see his bed laid out inside the industrial freezer with its door removed.

)