A man wearing a “vendetta” mask who brandished a kitchen knife and threatened to stab and slash the throats of two teenage girls in a Woodbridge street has been jailed for 13 months.

Terrance Nicholls, who was wearing a white mask with black eye and mouth markings, told the girls, who were 16 and 15 : “If you walk round the corner I’ll stab you” and then held the bread knife, which had a nine inch blade, above his head before walking away, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

When a local resident approached the girls to see if they were all right Nicholls had returned naked from the waist up and invited him to go to a nearby car park to fight, said Isobel Ascherson, prosecuting.

A resident of Pembroke Avenue who came out of his home called the police after hearing Nicholls tell the girls: “I’ll slash your throats” before pulling out the bread knife again.

Nicholls, 32, admitted having a knife in Pembroke Avenue, Woodbridge, where he was living, on July 9 2020 and an offence of affray on the same date.

In addition to being jailed he was banned from contacting two of the victims of the offences for five years and from going to Pembroke Avenue or St Edmunds Close, Woodbridge.

Adam Norris for Nicholls said his client had mental health issues and although he appeared brash and aggressive on the surface underneath he was “tearful and vulnerable.”

Nicholls, who has 78 previous convictions, was jailed for 21 months last month for offences of burglary and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

On that occasion the court heard that an Ipswich woman suffered a broken jaw after she was punched in the face by Nicholls after he stole keys from her home.

The woman had been at her home in Hawthorn Drive, Ipswich in September last year when a passer-by saw Nicholls going into her house and told her what she’d seen.

When the woman realised her keys, which had been left on a table just inside the front door were missing, she ran out into the street and demanded that Nicholls give her back the keys.

She pinned him against a wall and he had then punched her in the face with his fist causing a bilateral fracture to her jaw.

She later underwent surgery to have two metal plates fitted to help her jaw heal.