A RELATIVE of a teenager who was chased by a knife-wielding neighbour has described the sentence handed down to him as “madness”.

Dominic McGrath, 62, was given a community order and ordered to undergo mental health treatment for chasing the terrified boys aged, 13, 14, and 15 with a kitchen knife.

A woman in her twenties, who is a relative of one of the boys, said the incident had left him deeply traumatised.

She added: “He doesn’t go anywhere near the street or walk outside in the dark any more, which is unlike him. He’s always been so confident.

“I think the sentence is total madness. I cannot believe someone like that has been loose in public.”

Yesterday, Basildon Crown Court heard on January 14, McGrath was agitated because some other youths had been throwing things at his house in Melville Drive, Wickford.

He went berserk when he saw three boys walking past, wrongly assuming they were the children responsible for throwing the objects.

McGrath shouted “I’m going to get a blade” at the boys, then armed himself with a seven-to-nine-inch bladed kitchen knife chased them.

Richard Burrington, prosecuting, said: “They ran round the corner and stayed there until they thought the defendant had disappeared.

“But he was still in the area and once again, he chased after them. He had a kitchen knife which he took out specifically with the intention of scaring them away.”

In 2007, McGrath, a private music teacher by profession, was given a ten-year antisocial behaviour order banning him from acting in any way which would distress or alarm people living near him.

It included bizarre conditions was a ban on wearing a sinister black balaclava which he had been known to wear to intimidate neighbours.

He has breached the order before and in July last year, was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence after calling female neighbours “paedophiles and lesbians”.

In relation to the latest charges, McGrath admitted possessing an article with a blade in public, and another of breaching his Asbo, by using threatening words or behaviour during last month’s incident.

His lawyer, Stephen Rose, told Judge Ian Graham: “He had been angered by a number of youths and was at his wits’ end.

“He had phoned police on three occasions about this.

“The defendant has to take responsibility in that his behaviour was inappropriate and was a flagrant breach of his antisocial behaviour order.”

Judge Graham gave McGrath a 12-month community and supervision order and said he he had to sumbit to a 12-month mental health treatment programme.

He added: “I accept you have been having quite a bit of harassment yourself, but what you should not have done is go running into the street with a knife.

“Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but the danger of going out into the street with a knife is that somebody will get seriously hurt – and it could be you.”