A 23-YEAR-OLD who planned a “massive” killing spree in a York city centre park has been jailed for four years.

Jack Forest Cave had also threatened to kill a police officer, said Chris Moran, prosecuting at York Crown Court.

A probation officer told police Cave had told him in June: “For the last month I have planned this massive attack.

“I am going to a park on a sunny day and stab lots of people.”

Cave had described going to Museum Gardens with a knife and leaving without doing anything because there were not enough people there, said Mr Moran.

A few days later, Cave had told the probation officer about plans to stab the police officer to death.

“I am just so angry. I want to go to prison,” the defendant had texted to the probation officer.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, declared Cave to be dangerous.

“I will not take risks with the lives of the public and police officers in particular,” he said.

Although Cave had not stabbed anyone, the judge said: “I am not prepared to wait until you do in order to pass the appropriate sentence to protect the public.”

He passed a four-year prison sentence plus a four-year extended prison licence.

Cave, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to threatening to kill the police officer, assaulting a prison officer while on remand and criminal damage to a Covid-19 protection screen in Fulford Road Police Station.

The defendant was also resentenced for three assaults on York hostel workers for which Cave had been on a community order at the time of the latest offences.

Defence solicitor advocate Neal Kutte said the defendant had been diagnosed as having an emotional unstable personality disorder.

“There is clearly a genuine medical problem that has led to this offending,” he said.

There was a place available at a Birmingham hostel specialising in treating people with such conditions, he said.

York Crown Court heard Cave could be sent to the Birmingham hostel as a parole condition upon release.

Mr Kutte said Cave made the threats about the police officer to avoid meeting him after the defendant claimed to be the victim of a sex crime that may not have happened.

Cave was normally a “perfectly polite” person who had worked on rehabilitation while on remand.