A FORMER Bromsgrove soldier has been jailed after he approached a couple with a replica gun in the town because he wanted to be shot dead by armed police.

Simon Jones forced a stand-off with the police in a supermarket car park and he would have been shot if he had aimed his realistic semi-automatic pistol at them, Worcester Crown Court heard.

Nicholas Tatlow, prosecuting, told the court Jones was in his car at the rear of shops in Bromsgrove town centre at 9.30pm on April 19 when Jason and Diane Gardiner drove by.

They saw the car in the loading bay of Smash N Grab - the High Street shop where Mrs Gardiner worked. They stopped to see what he was doing and Jones reversed and blocked them in.

The 47-year-old ex-soldier, of Abbey Close, went up to the driver's window and tapped on it with the fake Colt pistol, Mr Tatlow said. Mr Gardiner opened the window a fraction and asked what his problem was. Jones replied he had lots of problems.

"He said 'do you want to be famous, big man? We'll be famous together'," Mr Tatlow told the court.

Mrs Gardiner called police as Jones went to his car and got out a replica semi-automatic Masada carbine rifle before he got back in and drove off.

An armed response unit saw him near the Victoria Ground in Birmingham Road and followed him to the Bromsgrove retail park's car park, where Jones got out of the car with his gun pointed at the ground.

The weapon seemed to be real and one officer took out his own gun. Jones refused calls to put the gun down and became angry when they told him they were not wearing cameras.

"If he had raised the gun, the officers would have had no option but to shoot him," Mr Tatlow said.

One of the officers fired a Taser at him and he fell backwards into the car, but it did not have the full effect. As the other officer approached to grab the fake gun, Jones pulled the Taser from his chest and grappled with him before he was restrained.

Mr Tatlow said Jones had intended to provoke a confrontation with police so he would be shot dead and he had approached the Gardiners to put his plan into effect.

Jones pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing replica weapons in an attempt to alarm or cause fear. The guns were found to be non-lethal gas-powered weapons capable of firing ball bearings at a low level.

He was found to have been drinking and was over the legal limit for driving.

Adam Western, defending, said Jones had joined the Army when he was 17 and been on tours of Northern Ireland in the 1980s where he had seen one of his friends killed. He was injured by a roadside bomb and honourably discharged, but later suffered from depression and bipolar disorder.

"There was very little support in those days for soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder," Mr Western said.

Jones had "a breakdown" when his marriage split up, the business he had built collapsed and he went bankrupt. He carried on working in commercial property maintenance and on the night of the incident he suffered a "personal crisis" after a row with his girlfriend.

Judge Robert Juckes, QC, said the guns had appeared to be the real thing to the Gardiners and to the police, who had acted with great skill and courage.

"To get them to shoot you, you had to make them believe you were going to shoot them and that is a serious matter," he said.

Jones, he said, had appeared to want to die in a very public way and was disappointed the police had no cameras. He said Jones was a man of previous good character who had served his country and suffered from his experiences as a soldier.

Jones was jailed for a total of two years three months. He has been in custody since April and this time will be deducted.