Lowestoft phone hoaxer jailed

A 21-year-old who made 60 hoax calls to the emergency services over a four month period was yesterday sent to jail.

Ashley Williamson admitted making nuisance 999 calls between June 27 and October 18 last year - including making 30 calls on one day.

Magistrates in Lowestoft heard previously that Williamson, of Milton Road East in the town, had made a series of hoax calls to the emergency services' control room, including 11 calls on June 27 and a further 30 on July 8 last year.

Williamson, who previously admitted using a public communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety, yesterday also pleaded guilty to breaching a suspended sentence, which had been imposed in August last year.

Ed Proffitt, for Williamson, said his client had lost his job at Kwikfit and broken up with his girlfriend shortly before the phone calls began.

He said: 'There are two types of hoax calls. There are those when the caller phones up and says that there is a fire somewhere and a fire engine is dispatched. Those are very serious and would probably attract an immediate custodial sentence.

'However there are others like these. He has either phoned up the control room drunk or given his phone to friends and said things like 'I reported such and such offence, is anybody going to come round?' He was then phoning up to wish them goodnight and generally making a nuisance of himself.'

Mr Proffitt said that since the offences, Williamson had stopped drinking with help from his family and had been offered a place on a course at Lowestoft College.

Chairman of the bench Trevor Allchin said that breaching a suspended sentence left him with no other choice than to send Williamson to jail.

Sentencing him to 21 days in prison for making the nuisance calls - with 21 days to run concurrently for breaching the suspended sentence - Mr Allchin said: 'This is so serious because of the wilful and persistent breach of the imposed orders which this court and other courts have given you.'