A TENANT who threatened to kill a housing officer during a meeting about his untidy property has been jailed.

Joseph Holdsworth was on a suspended jail sentence for harassment when he told the frightened official: “I’ll stop you dead.”

Holdsworth, who has a past of “unpredictable behaviour”, said: “Do you know why I’ve been in prison? I’ll shoot you.”

When the female employee in Middlesbrough ended the meeting last month, he walked out after warning: “I’ll kill you, bitch.”

The worker said in a statement read to Teesside Crown Court: “I should not be in fear of my life when I’m just doing my job. Thankfully, I live out of the area, otherwise I might not have slept that night. I fear him returning to the office.”

Holdsworth, of Brabourn Gardens, Hemlington, admitted making a threat to kill and was jailed for a total of 12 months.

Four months of the term is from the suspended sentence passed a year earlier for putting a person in gear of violence.

The court heard that he made “multiple” calls and text messages to the sister of his late-partner and called at her home.

Nigel Soppitt, mitigating, said Holdsworth had been excluded from his girlfriend’s funeral, and “emotions were running highly”.

Mr Soppitt made what he called “a plea of mercy” to Judge Howard Crowson not to jail the “complex” 39-year-old.

“He will emerge from custody as a man who has nothing at all in his life,” said Mr Soppitt. “His flat is the only thing he has. He will have to sleep rough and be a burden on the State. If he loses his flat, he loses everything. All he needs to do is be quiet.”

Mr Soppitt had earlier told the court that Holdsworth had received a number of summonses for the state of the rented property.

Judge Crowson told Holdsworth: “The threats you made were very significant ones, and you have a record which includes making that kind of threat. You have never carried them out, but she wasn’t to know you wouldn’t. They are very frightening.”