A WOMAN who ran amok with 10in knife in a city-centre street has been locked up and is awaiting sentence by a crown court judge.

Police blocked part of Clarence Street to protect the public from Kimberley Jane Angell, 22, late on Saturday, said Gill Sandall, prosecuting.

She started by climbing over the security fence around the Arc Light Centre for the homeless in Union Terrace, despite attempts by staff to keep her out, and leaving a trail of wreckage inside.

After leaving the hostel, she went into the street waving a ten-inch kitchen knife and shouting. Police had to spray her with incapacitating gas before they could restrain and arrest her.

Angell, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to carrying a knife in public, affray and criminal damage.

York magistrates decided her case was too serious for them to deal with and sent her to York Crown Court to be sentenced on February 4.

They rejected her application to be released on bail and remanded her in custody.

Ms Sandall said Angell had been living at the hostel but had been banned by staff for two days for bad behaviour.

Just before midnight on Saturday, in an agitated state, she asked permission to get in. When this was refused, she climbed over the fence with the knife in her hand.

Staff got other residents in the area inside and tried unsuccessfully to secure the front door.

While one of the staff barricaded herself in a secure staffroom, Angell smashed a large window by throwing a fire extinguisher at it, vandalised fire alarms and a water cooler.

She told the staff in the staffroom: “Don’t you come out here or I will have you.”

She then climbed back over the fence ten minutes after her arrival, and was arrested ten minutes later.

Angell’s solicitor, Richard Minion, said she had never intended to harm anyone. She had been aggrieved by her ban because she felt she had been singled out for having alcohol in one of the hostel’s rooms and she had taken her anger out on the hostel’s property.