A WOMAN threatened a shopkeeper with a knife after having her card decline to buy booze ... before he fought her off with a chair.

Justine Roberts has been jailed after she threw a knife at the shopkeeper during the botched robbery at Benfleet Wines, in Kiln Road, Thundersley.

During the attack, the shopkeeper was cornered behind a perspex screen in place as part of Covid restrictions, before fighting her off with a chair.

Roberts, 46, of Abbotswood, Hadleigh, tried to buy the cider at 8.45pm on February 3, but her card was declined twice.

Half an hour later she returned to the store, wearing a hat and face mask, and threatened the shopkeeper with a large kitchen knife, demanding he take cash from the till.

At Roberts’ sentencing hearing at Basildon Crown Court, Judge Ian Graham said: “You put a bag on the counter and demanded money from the till but he refused.

“You then went behind the counter threatening him with the knife.

“He fended you off with a chair and bottle.

“Eventually you threw the knife at him.

“He tried to escape but he was impended by the perspex glass. He had a small cut to his finger.”

Roberts then fled the scene but was arrested a short while later.

Mitigating, Kevin Toomey said Roberts had an entrenched drug addiction which began after a family tragedy.

He said: “She’s battled it for 27 years, she first started taking drugs at 19 when her brother was killed in a road accident.

“When her brother was killed her parents both had a breakdown and that took a toll on her and that started the drug taking.

“When released from the 2018 prison sentence in June she went to her mother’s house who has dementia.

“She found it difficult to cope with all her needs.

“On the day in question she was drunk, had been taking cocaine and acted in the way she did.”

Roberts was jailed for four years for attempted robbery and having a knife, and was banned from Benfleet Wines until further order.