A KNIFEMAN who threatened young children just half an hour after carrying out an armed robbery has been jailed for six years.

Lawyers representing Anthony Denial, 36, claimed at Preston Crown Court that the series of offences on April 27 in Darwen last year, were a cry for help'.

But Recorder John Bromley-Davenport said the young children must have been terrified'.

Prosecutor Kath Johnson said earlier that Denial had gone into a Co-op Late Shop, Blackburn Road, Darwen, and approached the front counter.

He asked shop assistant Gareth Carter for a number of items from behind the till, including two bottles of Smirnoff vodka, Amber Leaf tobacco and some Hamlet cigars.

Mr Carter placed the items in a bag but as he prepared to accept payment from Denial, he snatched the alcohol and tobacco from the assistant.

CCTV cameras footage then showed, as the assistant tried to retrieve the bag, how Denial produced a knife and made slashing motions towards the other man.

Mr Carter backed off when Denial said: "You are going to get it." Other customers witnessed the confrontation and backed away.

Before fleeing the store, Denial told him: "This is what the world is coming to.

"Do not ring the police and do not follow me."

One customer tried to chase him, but the robber escaped.

Forty minutes later, outside Woodvale flats in Darwen, a small crowd had gathered after a young girl had suffered a cut finger in a separate incident. An adult was tending to her injury and waiting for an ambulance when Denial arrived on the scene.

Denial smashed a nearby ground floor window and then withdrew the same knife, used in the earlier robbery, and brandished it threateningly at the youngsters nearby.

The adult who had been looking after the little girl quickly restrained him and the police, who had been alerted to the Co-op robbery, arrived shortly afterwards to arrest Denial.

Denial, a Darwen man of no fixed address, who admitted robbery and affray at an earlier hearing, was jailed for five years for the store raid and for a further 12 months for the Woodvale flats affray.

Stuart Hudson, defending, said his client had suffered from mental health problems for some time and had been in and out of hospital.

He said Denial had become increasingly frustrated at what he perceived to be a lack of treatment for his problems and had carried out the offences as a cry for help'.

The court heard that Denial, according to psychiatric reports, had now been diagnosed with paranoid schitzophrenia, characterised by psychotic symptoms.