A Sebastopol man who brandished a knife and said he'd stab another man at a Creswick lake was intimidating, threatening and menacing, a magistrate has said.
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David Pettit, 31, was sentenced to jail at the Ballarat Magistrates Court on Friday after he pleaded guilty to nine offences relating to five incidents last year.
"On all five occasions your conduct by words, damage and physical assaults was intimidating and threatening conduct involving a common feature of menacing," magistrate Ron Saines said.
"All offences are punishable by imprisonment."
In the first incident, Pettit was at St George's Lake in Creswick on New Year's Day, 2019, when a verbal argument started with another man over a disabled parking bay.
The father-of-two pulled out a knife, telling the man "I will stab you, I will slice your throat". Pettit stopped the man from calling triple-0 by holding his arms.
He was jumping around in an agitated state and waving the knife around and before leaving the area, he used an axe to slash the victim's vehicle tyres.
In another incident at 11pm on May 24, Pettit punched his Sebastopol neighbour twice to the side of his face after the neighbour asked him to ride his Green Machine further up the street.
Pettit's partner returned to their neighbour's house at 12.50am to apologise but Pettit intervened and threatened to stab him with a screwdriver before grazing his chest.
On October 13 at 9.40pm, Pettit attended another Sebastopol neighbour's house and yelled at him to come outside because he was playing loud music.
When the victim spoke to Pettit as he returned to his home, he became angry and jumped on the victim's fence and starting ripping wood palings off. Pettit grabbed the victim's head and pulled it down on the fence, causing a cut to his lip.
Pettit's defence lawyer had previously told the court Pettit experienced a disadvantaged childhood where violence and drug use occurred on a daily basis.
A pre-sentence report tendered to the court stated Pettit was unable to deal with situations as other members of the public reasonably would.
He was jailed for six months and placed on a 12-month community corrections order with 100 hours of community work. He has already served 164 days of the jail sentence and will be due for release from prison about April 20.
If Pettit did not plead guilty, he would have been sentenced to 12 months behind bars according to the magistrate.
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