A MAN already serving a six and-a-half year jail sentence for conspiracy to supply class A drugs has been given a nine month prison term after threatening his brother with a knife.

But a judge decided it would run concurrent to Robert Hutchinson’s existing sentence, meaning it will not extend his stay inside.

Teesside Crown Court heard Hutchinson took “haymaker swings” in the direction of his brother Dean outside his home, while holding a kitchen knife.

At the time he was on bail for the drugs matter.

Hutchinson, 32, of Barmouth Road, Eston, Middlesbrough, admitted threatening another with a bladed article in the early hours of March 10 this year.

Kieran Rainey, mitigating, said trouble had come to his door after an “unseemly family argument” which had now been settled.

The barrister said Hutchinson had used the knife demonstratively to keep his brother away and there had been a distance between them.

Judge Peter Armstrong said the defendant had reacted in the wrong way.

The judge remarked that Hutchinson was serving his first prison sentence and it was for a considerable period.

He said: “In the light of your guilty plea a concurrent [nine month] sentence to the one you are serving meets the justice of the case.”