A LONG distance lorry driver terrified teenagers when he took out a knife in a children’s playground and pointed it towards one of them.

As they fled, Ubaldo Marcin Cano scraped the knife along a brick wall and a metal railing in Boroughbridge, before throwing the knife with a four-inch blade at a bench to try to get it to stand up, York Crown Court heard

Graham O’Sullivan, prosecuting, said Marcin’s actions alarmed two adults who also fled.

One of the children later told police: “I felt intimidated and worried about what the male might do as he looked as if he didn’t care about what he was doing.”

Marcin’s solicitor advocate Susannah Proctor said he lived in a small Spanish village and didn’t realise that carrying a knife in Britain was illegal.

She said the trucker had been drinking and had no memory of the incident in near Wetherby Road at 9pm on September 4, where he had had to have a layover. He didn’t believe he would have threatened anyone.

Marcin, 46, pleaded guilty to carrying an article with a blade in public and was given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

He had been in an English prison since his arrest on September 4 and was freed, having served the equivalent of a two-month prison sentence.