Police swooped on a drink-driver sitting in a car with a machete in his hand while threatening a man in the street.
Dovel Taylor was angry because someone threatened his wife in the pub and had hold of the machete while asking a man in a blue top: “Do you like being threatened?”
Two women officers grabbed hold of Taylor’s wrists and asked him to drop the weapon.
More police arrived, took Taylor to the ground and one prised open his fingers to free the machete from his grasp, Spalding magistrates heard.
Paul Wood, prosecuting, said police were called at 3am on May 19 and saw Taylor in the driver’s seat of a Mitsubishi with his wife by his side and a man in a blue T shirt, who appeared agitated, standing outside the Black Swan in Spalding’s Westlode Street.
Mr Wood said the vehicle started to move, but a police officer stood in front indicating it to stop.
The officer could see at first what she thought was a piece of wood but realised it was a machete.
“The constable described the defendant as being in a daze of anger with his eyes fixed on the man in the blue top,” Mr Wood told the court.
At the police station Taylor described the weapon as “a little chopper”.
Mr Wood said: “He remembers saying to the man ‘do you like being threatened’?”
Taylor (35), of South Fen Road, Bourne, pleaded guilty to possessing a bladed weapon in a public place and to driving with excess alcohol.
He had 91 microgrammes of alcohol in breath – more than two-and-a-half times the legal limit.
Taylor will be sentenced at Lincoln Crown Court but received an interim driving ban at Thursday’s hearing.
Presiding magistrate George Hoyles told him: “The only mitigating circumstance of your case is that you are of previous good character – everything else we have heard has been stacked against you.”
Solicitor James Gray said there was some distance between Taylor and the other man and his threat was made from inside the car.
Taylor was angry because his wife was threatened and sworn at inside the pub.
He said Taylor intended to take a taxi that night but took the foolish decision to drive after the man came out of the pub.