'I was terrified' - Thug who shot up friend's Blackpool home with pistol jailed for 50 months

Armed police had to be deployed after Jake Hart blasted holes in walls and doors at a house in the resort after a row with an old school friend who took him in as a lodger.

The 20-year-old also used a hammer to cause extensive damage to furniture, four TVs and two mirrors, a judge in Preston was told.

Hart appeared before the city’s Crown Court for sentence after admitting charges of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, harassment and assault causing actual bodily harm in Blackpool.

He was also dealt with for three other offences carried out in Doncaster pleading guilty to blackmail, witness intimidation and threats to destroy or damage property.

Judge Paul Hodgkinson sent him down for 50 months and told him his offences had been “nasty and bullying behaviour” designed to strike fear into two young women and a kind-hearted foster-mum.

The court was told Hart, of Newton Drive, Blackpool committed the Doncaster offences in March 2023 when he entered a house where a young girl he had met while in the care system was being fostered.

He held a drinks bottle filled with liquid to her foster mum’s face and threatened to pour it over her if she didn’t give him £1,000. He had told her foster daughter it contained acid.

Hart left the house but later sent the girl a series of threatening messages, saying he would firebomb the house and “shoot her in the face” if she didn’t withdraw a statement she had made to police.

He also made threats in a phone call saying: “This is not finished. You need to drop your statement.”

And when he was arrested by police he told them: “When I come out of jail I am going to take lives. I am going straight back there when I come out of here.” He said that next time the liquid (in the drinks bottle) would be ammonia.

The other offences were committed almost a year later in Blackpool against a girl he had been friends with at school. She had allowed him to rent a room at her house when he had nowhere to live and he agreed to pay her £1,000 a month in rent.

But he soon began acting in an aggressive manner towards her and one day produced a pistol in the house which he fired in her direction.

He then shot holes in walls, doors and a laptop in the property before attacking four televisions, furniture and two mirrors with a hammer.

Hart grabbed the girl and flung her onto a bed before punching her repeatedly and kneeing her in the face. When armed police arrived she was crying, had numerous bruises and admitted she was “really scared”.

A firearms officer examined the gun and only realised it was a gas-powered air pistol when he removed the ammunition magazine and found a carbon dioxide canister inside.

“It was a firearm, a fully functional air pistol,” said barrister Caleb Suggitt, prosecuting.

In a victim impact statement read out in court the Blackpool girl said: “It is very difficult for me to talk about this incident as the experience I have suffered has been so traumatic it has made a huge impact on me.”

She said it had caused her to feel unsafe in her own home and the bullet holes in the walls and doors were a constant reminder. It had cost her £1,500 to replace the broken items and she was facing a further bill of £650 to repair the holes.

“I am scared,” she added. “I know he has been very angry with me. He has told people he will hurt me because I have cooperated with this prosecution.”

The foster mum in Doncaster also produced a victim impact statement saying her life had not been the same since the incident with Hart. She said she was in a constant state of fear of violence.

“I didn’t have £1,000 to pay him. I was terrified he would come back to hurt me.”

She said she had taken pride in taking in children who were in need. But now there was “no way” she could bring a child to live with her because he had threatened to come back.

“So I can’t (carry on) fostering. He has taken away that decision from me. I am constantly looking out of the windows. No human being should ever have to live like this.”

Mr Suggitt said the offences on both sides of the Pennines had been “persistent over a prolonged period” and had caused the victims “very serious psychological harm”.

Hart had been 18 when he committed the offences in Doncaster and 19 when he used the firearm in Blackpool.

Defence lawyer Julie Taylor admitted the case was “shocking” and her client had since shown great remorse for the significant upset he had caused his victims. She said the two young girls were just friends, one from his schooldays and the other he had met while in the care system. There were no intimate relationships with either.

Hart, she said, had a number of mental health issues, but had been benefitting from treatment while on remand in prison.

“He can’t reconcile the person he is now with the way he behaved at that time. He feels remarkably different to the young man who went into custody.”

Judge Hodgkinson said the two sets of offences had occurred almost a year apart when Hart was 18 and 19.

In Yorkshire he had blackmailed the foster mum who, said the judge, had been a “public spirited lady and a carer for your friend”.

“You had in your hands a sports bottle containing an unknown liquid. You pointed that at her and demanded that you pay her £1,000. You told your friend that the bottle contained acid.

“What else (other than a corrosive liquid) could she have thought it was when you held it at her face as a weapon? It must have frightened her. It caused some very serious distress.”

In Blackpool the judge said Hart’s actions were “bullying nasty behaviour”. The victim had been afraid to leave her bedroom “such was the fear your conduct instilled in her”.

“There is a theme here,” he added. “You disregarding anyone else’s feelings other than your own. You caused very serious distress.”

Hart, he said, had shown “astonishing arrogance and an astonishing lack of awareness to someone who had offered you kindness to stay at their house.”

In total he jailed Hart for four years and two months and made him the subject of a restraining order banning him from having any contact with the victims in both cases for the next 10 years.