Man was found standing on roof

When asked by the doctor who he was and what he was doing on his garage roof, Aaron Smith told him: “I’m taking a short cut.”

Smith, a 24-year-old former builder, of Furness Avenue, Grange Park, pleaded guilty to damaging garage ridge tiles, a public phone handset and a van window.

He was bailed for pre-sentence reports, and will be sentenced at a later date by District Judge Margaret McCormack, who was sitting at Blackpool Magistrates’ Court.

Smith must live at his given address and keep a 9pm to 7am curfew as conditions of his bail.

Pam Smith, prosecuting, said the doctor let his dogs out into the garden at his St Annes home on June 27, at about 11.25pm.

They started barking, and when the doctor investigated he saw Smith on his garage roof.

Smith told the doctor he was taking a short cut, before jumping off the roof and fleeing.

Police found him hiding in a garden in nearby Mayfield Road.

When interviewed, Smith said he was in Blackpool town centre when he thought people were following him.

He walked to St Annes, going through gardens and over roofs to avoid the people he thought were pursuing him.

In a separate incident on May 11, the court heard a witness described Smith behaving in a frenzied manner as he damaged a public phone handset in Blackpool, before kicking a window in on a Citroen van.

Kathryn Jamieson-Sinclair, defending, told the judge Smith believed he was suffering from psychosis and sometimes stayed up for days on end.

Smith had thought he was being followed, and walked to St Annes, where he found himself in a garden with no way out except over the garage roof.