A 33-year-old man has been warned he could be jailed for sending threatening emails to a female MP.
Liam McCarthy, of Copperfield Road in Southampton, appeared in the city’s magistrates’ court to plead guilty to sending the emails and leaving voice messages for Caroline Nokes between 15 May 2022 and 4 March last year.
McCarthy initially contacted the Conservative MP for Romsey and Southampton North to complain about a “lack of support for people aged between 18 and 25”, prosecutor Victoria Hill told the court.
“He moved on to talk about issues he was having with the Department for Work and Pensions and a debt collection agency.
“They didn’t end up seeing one another because the defendant cancelled his appointment because he felt unprepared.
“The emails continued and in August 2022, they started to become threatening.
“At that stage, the defendant was saying he would become violent towards members of the Department for Work and Pensions. He said he would kill them; he followed that up by saying he wouldn’t kill them but would really hurt them.”
Ms Nokes had responded, saying she would not put up with threatening or abusive emails, but they kept coming.
Ms Hill said: “There were repeated emails over quite some period – at one point he was threatening to destroy another MP, Alan Whitehead.
“He was making implied threats to (Nokes), saying she was on his list, along with other people.”
McCarthy also admitted leaving threatening voicemails for Steve Smith, former head of stronger communities, neighbourhoods and housing at Southampton City Council, between 14 and 21 November 2022.
“He said things like: ‘I will find you, I will f****** destroy you, I swear to God – I mean that as a threat’,” Ms Hill told the court.
McCarthy will be sentenced on 30 May.
District Judge Anthony Callaway told him: “People going about their business as an MP or otherwise, as Mr Smith was, are entitled to go about their business without fear of being threatened.
“This is a very serious matter and in my judgment possibly passes the custody threshold.”
Source Agencies
