Daughter's ex broke door in with hammer

Lee Drakes then chased Robert and Valerie Barnes around the house wielding a knife, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.

When police reached the scene in Pencombe Drive, Penn they heard Mrs Barnes saying 'please don't hurt me'.

Officers found her on a bed with 38-year-old Drakes standing nearby brandishing the knife after chasing her around the living room and up to the bedroom, said Mr Oliver Woolhouse, prosecuting.

Mrs Barnes, who like her husband is in her 60s, later told police: "It was the most scared I have been in my life."

The couple's daughter had been in a long-term relationship with Drakes that finished around Christmas 2014. "She said the ending was mutually agreeable and had only seen him once between then and the date of this offence," continued Mr Woolhouse. She later discovered he had been visiting the home of her parents, it was said.

When the defendant called at the address around 11am on May 17 last year, he claimed to have important papers for their daughter but was told to put them through the letterbox.

Mr Woolhouse explained: "They refused to let him in and then heard loud crashing as he smashed through the front door with a hammer. The defendant then came into the house and started breaking and throwing things."

These included a large pot of black paint which covered the aged Jaguar S Type of Mr Barnes causing so much damage that the £3,900 car was written off, it was said.

Then he threatened the couple with the knife although it remains unclear whether he had brought this weapon with him or picked it up in the house.

Mr Mukhtar Ubhi, defending, said two doctors had subsequently reached the conclusion that Drakes was a paranoid schizophrenic.

The defendant, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to do criminal damage, affray and criminal damage, and was made the subject of a hospital order.

He will be detained in a psychiatric unit under supervision by doctors who will decide when, if at all, he can be released.