A MAN has been jailed for his third conviction in less than a year arising from a lingering dispute with members of a neighbouring family.

Anthony Edward Etherington previously received a conditional discharge, with an order to pay £1,000 compensation, for damaging a car belonging to a neighbour, in Red Houses, High Etherley, near Bishop Auckland, last April.

Four days later he was involved in an incident on the A68, between Witton-le-Wear and Toft Hill, County Durham, after spotting two members of the neighbouring family driving in the same direction he was heading.

It resulted in him receiving an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for a year, after admitting dangerous driving, at Durham Crown Court, in November.

Etherington, 51, was ordered to undergo 15 days of probation-supervised rehabilitation activities, and to pay £500 costs.

He was also banned from driving for 18 months and made subject of a restraining order forbidding him approaching or contacting his neighbour for ten years.

But, he had to return to the court, again, having been found guilty by magistrates, in January, of criminal damage.

Andrew White, prosecuting, said Etherington smashed a window at the nearby home of the mother of the couple in the previous incidents, at 6am on December 7.

As the conviction put Etherington in breach of both the previous orders, magistrates sent the case to the crown court for sentence.

Chris Baker, mitigating, said until his problems with the family in High Etherley, Etherington kept out of trouble for a decade.

As a result, he has been seeking to leave the village and was recently living with his son in Ferryhill, to avoid further confrontation.

But, jailing him for a total of eight-and-a-half months, Judge Deborah Sherwin told him: “Whatever your gripe with the other family, it’s just not on for you to commit offences like this.

“You were warned when you were sentenced in November, and, given the history over the last year, I would be failing in my duty to that family and to justice, in general, if I did not activate the suspended sentence.”

He was also made subject of a further restraining order, preventing him approaching or communicating with the victim of the criminal damage attack, for ten years.