A ‘one-man crimewave’ spat Stella Artois over a barmaid in a spree that also saw him steal, threaten to kill his partner and handle £10,000-worth of possessions stolen in a Cotswolds burglary.

Bradley Jones, 30, who has now been jailed for four years, spent five weeks on the run before police eventually caught up with him in West Oxfordshire at the start of April.

After spotting the police on his tail in Witney on April 5, he led them on a 15 mile pursuit to Chipping Norton.

The disqualified driver ditched his Peugeot and fled on foot, before he was caught hiding in a shed – and slugging beer from a can.

Prosecutor Cathy Olliver told Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday (June 20) that Jones failed a roadside drugs test on his arrest. But he refused to give a blood sample and claimed, despite the tattoos adorning his skin, that he was scared of needles.

Judge Michael Gledhill KC described the defendant as being responsible for his own ‘crimewave’.

It started on January 6, 2021, when police were called to a property in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, over reports of two men and a woman arguing. “When [police] turned up it was Mr Jones, making enough noise for two, and his girlfriend,” Ms Olliver said.

It transpired that the defendant had filmed himself kicking and barging into the bathroom door, behind which his partner had sought refuge. He shouted a number of threats, including: “I’ll f***ing kill you.”

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On February 27 last year, Jones was at The Mermaid pub in Burford with another man. The pair were asked to leave the public house for harassing a group of female customers.

The drunken duo did not take the request well, issuing a stream of threats and throwing punches. A barmaid was forced to dodge out the way after the defendant threw a glass at her. When she went to remonstrate with the men, she was struck to the head but could not say who hit her.

Later that year, on August 9, Jones was part of a group of intoxicated men who went into the Kings Arms Hotel in Chipping Norton.

One of his companions was told he was barred, having been thrown out for drunkenness the day before. The banned boozer leant over the bar and tried to grab a drink can.

The barmaid told all three to go. They responded by pulling out cans of Stella Artois lager from a bag they had with them and began drinking their own alcohol in the bar. The men also started pulling their own pints.

Jones was said to have then spat a mouthful of Stella into the face of the barmaid. In a statement, she said the men had ‘gone out of their way to be as unpleasant and as disruptive as they could’, Ms Olliver said.

After he was arrested, he turned his stream of invective on police officers. He suggested one get in the ‘cage’ with him as the constable was a ‘nonce’ – slang for paedophile – Jones claimed. He added that ‘everyone was saying you looked like a nonce’ and went on to claim he had a knife.

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Jones and another man, Christopher Young, were responsible for fraudulently using bank cards left in a car stolen from outside a house in Chipping Norton on November 6. The owner had left it unlocked as he unloaded his shopping.

Sitting in the dock and listening to Ms Olliver with a scowl on his face, Jones could be seen shaking his head in disagreement when the prosecutor said the associate, Young, told police he had become involved in the theft ‘through pressure from Jones’.

On December 9, police searched an address linked to Jones and found him together with Young. In Jones’ van, the police found bags, purses and jewellery worth £10,000 that had been stolen a fortnight earlier during a break-in in Bledington.

The defendant failed to turn up at court at the start of March this year and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Police did not catch up with him until April 5. After making off from police on Woodstock Road, Witney, he drove at excess speed then ditched his Peugeot in Chipping Norton. He was found hiding in a nearby shed.

He then refused to provide a specimen of blood to check whether he was over the drug-drive limit.

At the time, he was still disqualified from driving – and had failed to complete an extended retest ordered after he was jailed for almost a year for dangerous driving.

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In addition to the raft of offences, Jones had also admitted three counts of shoplifting alcohol from different Co-ops and from the Kings Arms Hotel in Stow-on-the-Wold.

Mitigating, Gareth James told the court: “It all comes down to the misuse of alcohol; particularly at a difficult time in this defendant’s life.”

Jones, of Corrington Grove, Birmingham, was sentenced for making threats to kill, theft, handling stolen goods, common assault, threatening behaviour, driving while disqualified and failing to provide a specimen of blood.

The court heard he had 19 previous convictions for 41 offences.

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