A THIEF who yelled racist abuse at a man while brandishing a knife has been jailed for 14 months.

Homeless Callum Sherry, 20, who has a history of racist offences, had just taken a mobile phone from a 14-year-old boy in the town centre when Sylvester Okoli, 22, stepped in to help the youth.

But Sherry produced a knife, which he claimed to have found in a park half an hour earlier, before launching a racist tirade at the Nigerian-born good Samaritan and calling on him to fight.

Lynne Henderson, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court the offence took place on Friday, September 18, last year.

She said the teenager was outside Tesco in the town centre at about 9.30pm when Sherry, who seemed drunk, asked to borrow his mobile phone.

After Sherry had made a call he wandered off with the handset and refused to return it, even though his girlfriend told him to.

He walked off towards the bus station with the teenager and his friends following, and they enlisted the help of Mr Okoli.

They followed the couple into the Tricentre, where Sherry tried to hide behind a pillar, but Mr Okoli went up to him to ask for the phone back.

Sherry said he did not have it and pushed Mr Okoli away. The two men got into a struggle which Miss Henderson said ended when Sherry produced the knife.

In the meantime one of the teenager’s friends had called the police and told them what was going on.

Sherry was arrested soon afterwards and the knife was found nearby.

The court heard that Sherry only admitted what he had done on the basis he had been struck by Mr Okoli, who he said had picked up a stick. Prosecutors did not accept that this happened.

Miss Henderson said that while he was on bail Sherry stole a £200 mobile from the O2 shop in Swindon.

Sherry admitted he had put a person in fear or provocation of violence in a racially aggravated manner, having a bladed article in public and theft.

The court heard he had twice been convicted of racially aggravated offences.

Andrew Hobson, defending, said his client had found the knife a little earlier and produced it because he felt under threat from the people who were chasing him.

Mr Hobson said the incident was not racially motivated in the sense that the victim was targeted because of his race. Instead, Sherry had used the language while he committed the other offence.

Jailing him, Judge Euan Ambrose said: “Members of the public are entitled to be protected from racist abuse and they are entitled to expect the court to treat it as a serious matter.

“If in a busy town centre on a Friday night you commit an offence which puts someone in fear of violence and you combine it with racist abuse – that always passes the custody threshold.”