A SERIAL offender has been warned he will be made to spend more time in prison if he carries on threatening to kill himself.

Anthony Moores, aged 24, of no fixed abode, had six times previously called police saying he had a knife and was going to kill himself in what Judge Nicholas Woodward described as a ‘cry for help’.

And on February 2 Moores contacted them again after taking a kitchen knife from a hostel in Warrington.

John Oates, prosecuting, said: “The defendant phoned the police from a public phone box at 12.15am. He sounded depressed and said he was going to kill himself and had a knife. The police found him and he voluntarily handed the knife over.

“He apologised to the police for the trouble he had caused.”

Warrington Crown Court heard on Thursday how Moores had a long history of the same offence - possessing a knife in public - in the same circumstances as the February offence.

The first case went back to April 2012 and despite a number of community orders being handed out Moores had continually breached them.

Judge Woodward questioned him about whether he had been in prison before and when told Moores had he asked if he liked being in prison - to which Moores said no.

Judge Woodward added: “The court has been trying to deal with you in ways to keep you out of prison and you always offend. If you carry on doing this it is increasingly difficult to keep you out of prison.

“That’s why when you did it again this time you were locked in custody and that is likely to happen again.

“You need to find another way to deal with your problems. There are people who want to help you.”

Moores was handed a 59 day prison sentence - which was equivalent to the number of days he had spent in prison while waiting for his case to be heard.

Judge Woodward added court orders handed out in December would remain in place to help Moores get help to tackle his depression and offending.