An Ipswich man who was found in possession of a knife when he was arrested after turning up uninvited at his former partner’s home has been jailed for 11 months.

Police officers went to Franklin Road in the town in June last year after Sean Duffy went to the woman’s home despite her telling him to stay away and there was an argument, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

He appeared to have been drinking and she asked him to leave, said Nicola May, prosecuting.

The woman said she was going to call the police and when Duffy went outside for a cigarette she shut the door behind him.

When the police arrived they noticed Duffy was behaving in a “volatile and unpredictable” manner and when he was searched after being arrested he was found to have a locked modelling knife and some cannabis, said Miss May.

Duffy, 38, of Mildmay Road, Ipswich, admitted possessing a bladed article and possessing cannabis. He also admitted being in breach of a suspended prison sentence imposed in January last year for a public order offence and assaulting an emergency worker.

He was jailed for three months for breaching the suspended sentence order with eight months to run consecutively for possessing the modelling knife.

Sentencing Duffy, Recorder Graham Huston said although he hadn’t produced the knife during the incident at his former partner’s house there was “no conceivable reason” for him being possession of it and he had to assume he’d taken it along deliberately.

He said it was inevitable that when he attended his former partner’s address after she told him to stay away there would be a confrontation.

“”It’s clear you went to the address to confront her and through your words and behaviour you did what you could to provoke her,” said the judge.

“When tempers run high a knife could be produced and easily used,” said the judge.

He said the offence before the courts and the offences for which he was given a suspended prison sentence demonstrated that Duffy lost control and behaved in an obnoxious way after he’d been drinking.

Lynne Shirley for Duffy said although he was a long term alcoholic he had stopped drinking and using cannabis since having a fit.

“The fit was a wake up call for him,” said Miss Shirley.