Last updated at 16:42, Friday, 16 November 2012

A MAN accused of brandishing a knife towards doormen at a Barrow pub has told a jury he had no weapon with him at the time.

Shaun Taylor accepts having got into an argument with “bouncers” at the Kings Arms pub in Dalton Road, but insisted to a court that he had not threatened them.

He also said that the only thing he took out of his coat pocket was a mobile phone, as he was trying to ring a friend inside the premises that night in June.

The 21-year-old, of Queens Walk, Ossett, Wakefield, is on trial at Preston Crown Court where he denies a charge of affray and another allegation of possessing an offensive weapon.

The prosecution claims that after being stopped from entering the pub one night he threatened doormen and then lunged towards the doormen with a large kitchen knife. No knife was ever found.

He had been prevented from entering as he was barred from pubs in Barrow town centre, due to an earlier incident.

Giving evidence in his trial, the defendant said that earlier this year he had served two months in prison for having a knife.

He stressed he had not used the knife to threaten anyone, but had thrown it onto the floor of a pub on the earlier date.
Then on June 9, he had been at a friend’s house having a drink with a couple of others. They later went to the Rams Head pub in Rawlinson Street and spent an hour there.

One of his friends asked for £10 which Taylor owed him and the defendant said he would try and sort it out.

The same friend was later in the Kings Arms and when he himself tried to go in, he claimed that doormen called him a “nuisance” and told him he couldn’t go in.

He tried again to enter, but was pushed and fell over.

Taylor said he went to his Barrow address and got some money in order to pay his friend back.

He tried to ring his friend twice, in order to give him what was owed, while outside the pub, but got no answer.

He claimed that one of the doormen called him a name and mentioned that he had been to prison and thought he was “hard”.

He told the court he didn’t have a knife or similar object on him at the time but he had taken his iPhone out of his jacket pocket.

“He (the doorman) said to me ‘I’ll kill you’ and walked towards me. He also said ‘I’ve had enough of you winding me up’. I walked off,” Taylor told the jury.

The trial continues.

First published at 10:21, Friday, 16 November 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk