A WHEELCHAIR-bound man has been given a suspended sentence after he made repeated calls to the police and refused to leave a local supermarket.

On August 19, 2018, Michael Sefton of Little Priest Lane, Pershore, was made the subject of a criminal behaviour order, forbidding him from calling police unnecessarily and from harassing staff at a nearby Asda supermarket.

But Worcester magistrates heard that between June 1 and 11 this year, Sefton made 12 nuisance calls to the police, and that on June 6, he visited the Asda store, in King George Lane, and refused to leave when staff asked him to.

Sefton pleaded guilty to both charges and was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for 12 months.

Barry Newton, for Sefton, said his client has a number of mental and physical health problems.

He has to use a wheelchair and he suffers from an "extreme form" of bipolar disorder.

"He was suffering from a manic episode when this incidents occurred, and he became an in-patient in hospital for a week," said Mr Newton.

As well as the suspended sentence, Sefton was fined £50 for each of the two offences, and ordered to pay £50 costs and a £115 victim surcharge.

In February, Sefton was given a conditional discharge for assaulting a paramedic who had been called to his home.

And in December last year, he was given a 12-week suspended sentence after admitting causing criminal damage and breaching a criminal behaviour order.

In this incident, he had gone on a rampage in a newsagents, ripping a magazine with his teeth and crashing his mobility scooter into a fridge.

In July 2018, he was fined for threatening behaviour towards staff members at the supermarket, from which he had previously been banned.

The court heard on this occasion that Sefton he had suffered a major motorcycle accident in his 20s, that had caused temporal lobe brain damage, life-long paralysis and the amputation of his right leg, resulting in him being reliant on a wheelchair.