A GRIEVING girlfriend flipped when she saw a couple looking happy and went on a terrifying rampage through her neighbourhood with a knife.

Jennifer Hatch wanted police to shoot her because she had struggled to cope with the death of her partner, who died in her arms two years ago.

When she saw the couple on a lawn, it brought back memories of their own times together and tipped her over the edge, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Hatch – who had been drinking cocktails at a party and taking extra amounts of her medication – went home and drank even more alcohol.

She rang police and told them she had a loaded gun, and when no one responded to her call, she grabbed a kitchen knife and went into the street.

Hatch woke one neighbour as she screamed outside and hacked at his front and back doors with the knife, said Gale Gilchrist, prosecuting.

Police were called to the scene in Redcar, east Cleveland, and saw the armed mother-of-two challenging a number of people in Armitage Road.

Ms Gilchrist said the 24- year-old chased a woman and then a man, shouting at each of them, and then a police officer: “I’m going to stab you.”

An officer drew his Taser stun gun, but did not use it, and Hatch ran towards the patrol car and began stabbing it, before lunging at a passing cyclist.

Hatch went to another house, threatening to hurt the occupant, and when the owner answered her knock, he was warned to get back inside by police.

Another officer arrived at the scene and used her Taser, and when Hatch was lying on the ground, she pleaded: “Shoot me, I want to die.”

Joan Smith, mitigating, told the court of Hatch’s troubled background, and described the incident on June 22 as “a desperate cry for help”.

She said her client’s fiance died in front of his children after a drugs overdose on the day they were planning to set a date for their wedding.

Hatch was four months pregnant at the time of the tragedy, and Miss Smith said: “It was an incident that disturbed her greatly and stays firmly with her. It accumulated so much in her that on the night she saw a happy couple it made her reflect on her past and what could have been.

“She is incredibly apologetic.

She is very remorseful that she may have scared and shocked people. She had no desire to harm anyone but herself.”

Hatch, of Armitage Road, Redcar, admitted affray and two charges of criminal damage, and was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence.

Judge Tony Briggs said: “It is really to the credit of the police officers that they managed to deal with you as efficiently as they did.

“Anyone in a disturbed state, wandering about with a knife, knocking on doors and being threatening, poses a very frightening sight.”