A man with an ‘appalling record’ deliberately breached a restraining order by turning up at his mum’s house - he told her to call the police as he ‘wanted to go back to jail’. Mark Price, 41, had previously been handed a restraining order banning him from contacting his mum or going to her house.
He’d previously assaulted his mum, and had been jailed for a year after harassing her in a four-year-long campaign. But, following his release from prison on December 16 2021, Price, of Audenshaw, went back to his mum’s house at around 6.30am and knocked on her door.
She came downstairs and looked through the spyhole to see him standing there, Minshull Street Crown Court heard. He asked her to let him in, then told her to phone the police as he ‘wanted to go back to jail’.
READ MORE:
“Three hours later he returned and knocked on the window. Again he asked her to ring the police and at this stage she did call the police,” Rachel Cooper, prosecuting, said. “When the police arrived, he walked into the road, was waving his arms around and thanked the officers.
“They observed that he was either drunk or under the influence of heroin or crack cocaine. The Crown would say this was a deliberate breach of the restraining order.”
Price was said to have 24 previous convictions for 43 offences, the majority of which were breaches of restraining orders in relation to his mum and his ex-partner. Whilst he has been remanded on licence, Price was said to have ‘never looked better’ as he has appeared to have reduced his drug intake, his barrister Nicholas Clarke said.
“He had been on the street, and at that time he preferred to be in Forest Bank,” he said. In December 2021 he was hungry and cold, so he felt he could either go out and commit another offence, or tap on his mother’s door. That’s what he did, and he got what he wanted.
“He will be on licence and the conditions will prevent him from contacting his mother.”
Jailing Price, of no fixed, Judge Mark Savill said this was an ‘unfortunate set of circumstances’. “In 2018 there was a conviction for an assault against your mother and a restraining order was imposed.
“You simply refused to abide by the order of the court. What seems to have happened here is, on the one hand you say you didn’t have much choice, as you were homeless and nobody was helping you. But on the other hand, the pre-sentence report reads that you have been offered help, and simply you haven’t taken it and gravitated back to your mum.
“The restraining order was imposed to stop you from seeing her. You have one of the worst records I have ever seen for breaching court orders.”
