A “FAMILY MAN” who brandished a BB gun during a "disgraceful" confrontation on a busy Bradford street has been spared jail.

Karol Varadi, 45, pointed the weapon at Pavel Kanda and threatened to kill him during the argument on March 23 last year.

Prosecutor Robert Galley told Bradford Crown Court that Varadi had arrived by taxi outside his home on Lapage Street at around 3pm when he saw Mr Kanda walking past the house. He began swearing at him, before going into the property and returning with a BB gun.

Mr Galley said Varadi pointed the gun “between the eyes” of Mr Kanda, telling him: “I’m going to kill you. You’re going to die in the UK and no-one is going to help you.”

The dispute came to an end after Varadi’s wife intervened, but business owners at the junction of Lapage Street and Leeds Road had already called the police after hearing the disturbance.

In a victim impact statement, Mr Kanda said the incident had led him to being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He described how he had difficulty sleeping or working, and said flashbacks of the confrontation had left him “paranoid and scared to go out.”

Describing the weapon, Mr Galley said: “It was a relatively small handgun, but easily mistaken for the real thing.”

Varadi had pleaded guilty to charges of possessing an imitation firearm and making threats to kill prior to yesterday’s hearing.

Andrea Parnham, mitigating, said there was a history between the two men with Mr Kanda having previously been accused of hitting one of Varadi’s relatives with a hammer in a different incident. She said Varadi claimed that Mr Kanda had approached him first, making threats towards him and his daughter.

She said that while Varadi, who listened via a Hungarian interpreter, had previous convictions for offences in Slovakia, he had worked and kept a clean criminal record since arriving in the UK in 2012.

Sentencing him to 22 months in prison, suspended for two years, Judge David Hatton QC told Varadi: “This was a disgraceful incident, which I believe you now genuinely regret.

“Whatever background existed between you and this man, you dealt with it in a wholly inappropriate way.

“You will have put that man in very considerable fear. Even though the firearm was not real, he was not to know that. He has been caused very significant stress and trauma as a result.

“You cannot take the law into your own hands in this way.”

Varadi was also ordered to abide by the terms of a restraining order and complete 150 hours of unpaid work and a three-month curfew.