A VIOLENT drunk was saved from jail yesterday by the actions of his neighbours.

Teesside Crown Court heard that police were regularly called to Paul Reader's home to deal with his drunken outbursts.

Reader, 38, who had a Rottweiler, was arrested twice for threatening police with knives outside his home.

John Gillette, prosecuting, said he had wielded a Stanley knife and he told them: "One of you is going to get killed tonight."

Officers used CS gas to arrest him and took him to Redcar police station where he vandalised his cell.

Stephen Constantine, mitigating, said Reader had quit drugs and drink after neighbours started to take him every week to an addictive behaviour clinic and to appointments with probation officers.

Three neighbours were at Teesside Crown Court yesterday when Reader pleaded guilty to two charges of having a bladed article, one a knife with an eight-inch blade, and also affray on May 15 and July 1.

Judge David Bryant told him: "It does appear that through the assistance of people to whom you owe a a great debt of gratitude and through the treatment you have received that a remarkable change has come about.

"It does seem that a prison sentence is appropriate but the progress you have made does amount to an exceptional circumstance which allows me to suspend it."

Reader of Hampden Street, South Bank, near Middlesbrough, was given a nine- month prison sentence that was suspended for two years.