A pensioner pointed a gun at staff members at a York city centre coffee shop and told a terrified manager: “I’m going to kill you.”
Gary Maddison, 65, was in Caffe Nero on Davygate when he pointed the small silver pistol at a staff member and assistant manager and pulled the trigger, York Crown Court heard.
The named manager thought she was about to die, but there was no bang nor bullets – because the weapon turned out to be an imitation gun, albeit wielded with malevolent intent.
Prosecutor Rob Galley said terrified staff at the coffee chain were unsure whether the weapon was real or not as customers looked on in horror.
A few hours earlier, at about 10.30am on 20 January last year, Maddison walked up to a man in Colliergate who happened to be an off-duty police officer and told him there was “a gunman in York”, then joked: “It’s me!”
Maddison – who will now spend his 66th birthday in prison a week today – then took out a toy gun from his bag and told the officer he had bought it from a joke shop.
The off-duty officer told him not to brandish it in front of members of the public as “they may think it was real”.
Maddison, who led an “itinerant lifestyle” in York city centre, paid no heed and at about 12.15pm he walked into Caffe Nero and sat down next to a woman enjoying a hot brew on a Saturday afternoon busy with shoppers.
He put his feet on the table, started arguing with staff and became “obnoxious” and verbally abusive, ludicrously claiming that one of them had stolen his bank card and demanding a free drink.
The commotion alerted the assistant manager who heard Maddison shouting and swearing at staff. She and other staff members tried to get him to leave as she called York’s street rangers for help.
As he was escorted out of the shop, Maddison continued swearing at staff, refused to leave and shouted: “I’m going to kill you.”
When confronted by a staff member, Maddison told him: “This is going to be your last breath.”
The assistant manager and the staff member went outside to ask Maddison to leave, only for him to pull out and brandish the imitation gun.
As Maddison pulled the trigger, the manager “thought she was going to die” and feared he might turn the weapon on her colleagues and customers, before realising it wasn’t a real gun.
Maddison called her a deeply offensive name and told her: “I’m going to kill you on Monday.”
80 previous convictions
By the time street rangers arrived at the scene, Maddison had darted into the nearby Marks & Spencer store.
“He was detained shortly afterwards by police and the gun was recovered,” said Mr Galley.
He said although Maddison had a drug problem, it wasn’t clear whether he was intoxicated at the time.
He was charged with carrying an imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and two counts of making a threat to kill. He admitted possessing the firearm with intent but denied making threats to kill.
The prosecution ultimately accepted these pleas and Maddison, who had been living in temporary accommodation in Vyner Street, York, appeared for sentence yesterday (Tuesday).
In a victim statement read out by the prosecution, the assistant manager at Caffe Nero said the incident had such a profound effect on her that she had since moved to another shop because she was “worried about seeing the defendant again”.
She said her anxiety had since “got a lot worse” and she had even changed her bus route into the city centre.
Maddison had 80 previous convictions for 150 offences including damaging property, theft and public disorder. He was convicted for possessing an imitation firearm 20 years ago. On that occasion it was “tucked in his waistband”.
In 2015, he was given a mental-health disposal after being convicted of arson.
Defence barrister Nicholas Hammond said Maddison’s “numerous previous convictions for a whole range of offending” was “perhaps indicative of somebody who, in the main, lives an itinerant lifestyle”.
He said Maddison hadn’t been taking his medication for mental health issues at the time of the “frightening episode” at the café.
Judge Simon Hickey told Maddison his gun-wielding antics had terrified staff and customers who may not have realised initially that the weapon was fake. He jailed Maddison for 12 months.