A KNIFEMAN has been jailed for threatening to cut the throat of a love rival.

Victor Jeffries, of Blackledge Close in Cinnamon Brow, was found guilty of making threats to kill and three counts of possession of a knife – just days after he had been spared jail for brandishing knives in a town centre pub.

On Friday, June 15, he was handed 42 months behind bars at Liverpool Crown Court.

The 58-year-old was walking around the town centre drinking a bottle of brandy on Monday, March 19, when he made a phone call to his ex-partner Angela Kearns shortly before 4pm.

Jeffries left a voicemail on Kearns’ phone, during which he called her a ‘b****’ and threatened to kill her former partner Colin Day.

In the voicemail message, he said: “Where’s that ginger c***?

“I’m going the cut his throat – I’ve just bought a new knife and when I find him he’s dead.”

At around 5pm on the same day, Jeffries went to the Mega Bargain Store on Buttermarket Street and bought a pack of three kitchen knives for £1.20.

Soon afterwards, he returned to the shop as he wanted to buy a backpack.

In the intervening period, Jeffries had removed the knives from their packaging and placed them in his pocket.

A member of the public raised concerns to the shopkeeper, and the pair removed him from the store and restrained him until the police attended.

Jeffries claimed he had bought the knives as he was planning to go home and make a salad, but his knives had been confiscated by police after an incident at the Barley Mow pub in March.

But he was found guilty of the four counts at Warrington Magistrates Court last month.

Ten days prior to the altercation at the Mega Bargain Store, Jeffries had been spared jail for ‘waving knives around’ during a drunken argument in the Old Market Place pub.

His latest offending resulted in him breaching a nine-month suspended prison sentence handed down on that occasion.

And on Friday his honour judge Steven Everett sentenced the alcoholic to an immediate jail term.