A man has been jailed for 12 weeks, suspended for a year, after being found with an axe outside Keighley railway station.

Paul Collins, 39, was sentenced at Bradford and Keighley Magistrates’ Court yesterday after being found guilty of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place following a trial at the same court on April 9.

Prosecutor Linda Fowler told the court that officers from West Yorkshire Police and the British Transport Police had been called to the station on the afternoon of October 16 last year, after reports of a man in a camouflage jacket brandishing some sort of “large metallic object”, and another man with some form of head injury.

She said a member of station staff said they had seen the man in front of the building, holding what appeared to be a hammer or an axe, causing concern to members of public.

After police arrived, a 30cm axe was recovered from the back pocket of the man’s trousers. In mitigation, solicitor Victoria Molloy told the court that Collins, of Brecks Road, Clayton, was a plasterer who had been using the axe to renovate a house. She said he admitted possessing the implement, which she said police had confirmed was covered in plaster dust, but denied wielding it.

Miss Molloy said Collins knew the injured man, who was drunk, and was in the process of helping him into a taxi. Alongside a custodial sentence, chairman of the bench, Ros Seton, imposed a 12-month community order with 200 hours of unpaid work and prosecution costs totalling £480.