MARK Carroll has escaped a prison term for brandishing a samurai sword at neighbours and shouting he was going to kill them.

The 45-year-old, who had no previous convictions, flipped on Christmas Eve in frustration at the behaviour of people living near him, a court was told.

The burly dad armed himself with the ceremonial weapon and stormed around to the door of the neighbours at The Circle, Pinehurst.

As he banged on the door he shouted: "Someone better come out here now because I am going to kill someone.

"You better all move out or I'll kill someone. You better all get out before I burn the house down" and "I am in the mood to kill someone tonight."

But Philip Warren, defending, told Swindon Crown Court that the incident came at the end of 18 months of misery.

He said: "He has lived there since 1991 and in the middle of 2003 this other family moved in and for 18 months leading up to Christmas just gone he has suffered appallingly.

"These people have made his life absolutely insuffer-able. There is a long list of problems they have caused including winding people up."

He said that even in the witness statements of the family, one of the sons referred to his brother "trying to wind Mark next door up."

Carroll and his two children suffered trespass, litter, damage, irritating riding of motorcycles up and down and broken padlocks.

"It is the defence sub-mission that it would have had to be pretty extreme to drive Mr Carroll to behave like he did," he said.

"It is not just him but several other neighbours moved away.

"His daughter, now 21, usually works but was off from June to September last year with depression brought on by the degrading of the quality of their life because of the people living next door."

He said that after drinking and with all the stress which comes at Christmas time his client "flipped" and grabbed the sword.

"It is behaviour for which he is totally contrite," he said, pointing out that he was apologetic when the police arrived telling them "I'm sorry to mess up Christmas."

Mr Warren said that Carroll had only started back at work last year after ten years bringing up his son and daughter alone.

He said that his intention on Christmas Eve had been to frighten his neighbours and nothing more.

Sentencing Carroll, who had admitted affray and possessing an offensive weapon, Judge Charles Wade said there was no doubt he was under the influence of drink.

He said: "I take into account from the pre-sentence report that you are very sorry for what you did. You are contrite and accept your affect on other people was very, very poor.

"You can quite imagine the sort of terror there would be at the sight of a man approaching their home with such a weapon.

"Although on the face of it this does appear to be a serious case of this kind which would warrant custody immediately, I have decided in the circum-stances that custody can be avoided."

Instead he ordered Carroll do 200 hours of community service and the sword to be forfeited and destroyed.

Jamie Hill