A FORMER soldier and heroin addict who subjected his mother to a “terrifying” ordeal in their Herefordshire home has been given a two-year jail sentence.

Jesse-Jon Spence grabbed his mother Linda Spence around the neck, held a six inch stiletto knife in front of her face and locked her in with him at her home in Leominster in a 90-minute ordeal, Worcester Crown Court was told.

Michael Conry, prosecuting, told the court the 38-year-old had returned to Leominster from Wiltshire earlier this year and was homeless before he was reluctantly accepted back into his mother’s house.

She loaned him small amounts of money until the total reached £300.

On May 8 this year at 5pm she refused him a further loan and he got angry, grabbed her neck with both hands and pushed her into the hallway where they both fell.

He got up and pushed her onto the stairs, putting his hand over her mouth, Mr Conry said.

“She was struggling to breathe,” Mr Conry said.

When he let her go, Mrs Spence, an asthmatic, went upstairs to get an inhaler. He locked the front and back doors and closed all the windows and shut the curtains, telling her he would have to keep her in as a prisoner.

He told her they were “in a hostage situation,” Mr Conry told the court.

Spence got the knife from a shoebox in his bedroom and held it in front of her face and then put it to his own throat and said he wanted her to use it on him.

He left the house and the police became involved after Mrs Spence went to the doctor for treatment to bruising.

Spence, of Croft Street, Leominster, pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.

The prosecution did not proceed with a charge of actual bodily harm.

Alun Williams, defending, said Spence took full responsibility and regretted what he had done.

He said Spence had spent seven years in the Royal Artillery, serving in Ireland and Iraq, and had since held a number of dangerous jobs including mining, farming and deep sea fishing.

He had been a productive member of society despite his life being blighted for the last 14 years by heroin and he was now determined to win the fight against his addiction.

Judge Robert Juckes, QC, said it must have been “terrifying” for Mrs Spence.

“ You are obviously a man of ability,” he told Spence. “It is extraordinary how a man like you should end up like this.” He gave him a jail sentence and issued an indefinite restraining order.