A MAN who repeatedly threatened people with dirty needles while ‘obliterated’ on legal highs has been jailed for 20 months.

A police officer needed a number of medical tests after he was stabbed by one of the hypodermic needles as he searched John Lampard’s pockets.

Lampard, 26, also ran across railway tracks after causing a disturbance at the railway station and smashed a plate over the head of a man in a kebab shop.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the offences happened during a week in spring.

In the first incident Lampard was being hunted by police having fled from a fast food joint on Manchester Road after hitting a man with the plate on May 25.

Later that night officers found him slumped at a petrol station in Fleming Way where he brandished two needles and had to be pepper sprayed as he aggressively moved towards them.

The following Friday police were called to the railway station to reports of a man threatening staff with needles after going under the ticket barrier.

When Lampard, who had been released on bail, saw officers, he ran across the tracks towards the car park again waving the needles about and threw a brick at a car.

He was on bail again on June 1 when officers saw him pulling his trousers down on the pavement opposite the fire station.

They went to speak to him and detained him when he ran into the road. They handcuffedhim and put on two sets of leg restraints.

He insisted he had nothing dangerous on him, but as an officer searched his pocket he was stabbed in the arm by another uncased hypodermic.

“The officer immediately withdrew and squeezed his arm hard to draw blood and expel anything that had contamination,” Mr Meeke said.

“I have not been able to find out about any further treatment, but clearly he would have to undergo a number of tests.”

Lampard, of Wilcot Avenue, admitted three counts of having a bladed article, common assault, threatening behaviour and trespass on the railway.

Tony Bignall, defending, told the court his client had been taking a legal high which had a severe affect on him.

He said: “If he carries on behaving like this he is not going to be alive much longer. I think he recognises that abusing his body can’t go on. Either he is going to wake up dead in his bed or dead in the gutter.

“He was of no fixed abode for some time and seems to have gone down one dark pit after another, hanging on street corners getting obliterated on legal highs.”

Jailing him, Judge Tim Mousley QC said: “You are 26 and next month you will have been committing offences consistently for 10 years.

“As far as I can see you show no real sign of stopping offending, notwithstanding the effect it seems to be having on your health.

“So far as these offences, they were committed while you were under the influence of what is described as a legal high. Legal or not in this case it turns you into a very dangerous person.

"In this case under the influence of drugs you resorted to threats of violence to almost anyone you came in touch with. There is a need to protect the public from that kind of behaviour.”