Tenants in a block of Dundee flats looked out their front door spyhole in the early hours of Boxing Day to find a neighbour scratching the door with a large kitchen knife, a court was told.
When they opened the door to confront the culprit, Mark Warren, 38, a prisoner at Perth, went back into his house with the knife.
The tenants saw that he had made large scratch marks on their door and called the police, Dundee Sheriff Court heard.
Warren was jailed for a year after admitting that, on December 26 2014, at Red Admiral Court, he possessed a knife while on bail and possessed diamorphine at Police Scotland Tayside Division HQ on Bell Street.
Depute fiscal Eilidh Robertson told the court the incident arose after the tenants heard excessively loud music coming from Warren’s flat at 11pm on Christmas Day.
Warren had come to their flat and there was a disagreement between them, Ms Robertson said.
They separated at that point, but a short time later he returned to the front door and they could hear scratching noises coming from outside.
The tenants looked through their spyhole and saw the accused on the other side of the door with a large bread knife, which he was using to scratch their door with, the fiscal said.
“The neighbours opened the door to confront him and the accused went back into his own flat, the police were called and when they attended they saw fresh scratches on the door.
“They entered his property and found a knife inside which the neighbours identified as being the knife he had used,” Ms Robertson continued.
At police HQ, they found a £10 wrap of diamorphine, she added.
Solicitor Theo Finlay said it was a “stupid and pointless act.”
Sheriff Alastair Carmichael said: “This is your fourth conviction involving the carrying of a weapon of some kind or other. The only appropriate sentence is a custodial sentence.”
He jailed Warren for 12 months.