A PUB worker who held an imitation gun to a six-year-old boy's head and threatened to shoot has been jailed for 12 months.

Steven Poggiani was convicted at Worcester Crown Court in August of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.

Poggiani, aged 30, of East Street, Kidderminster, and formerly of Kimberlee Avenue, Cookley, admitted having ammunition at his home without a licence.

The jury was told that Poggiani had been drinking in August last year before he threatened Christopher Puttock with the pistol. He pointed it at the lad's head and said: "Bang, bang, you're dead."

The youngster fled crying into his house and his mother collapsed with shock.

The prosecution said Poggiani was retaliating because his nephew had been frightened when Christopher's father, Maurice Puttock, had fired a toy pistol into the air some months previously to drive children away from his car.

Mr Dominic Bell, defending, submitted that it was "a domestic dispute between neighbours." Mr Puttock had been prosecuted and was only sentenced to community service.

Poggiani was helping to run his father's pub and was supporting his partner's two children aged three and one.

Recorder Michael Burrows said he accepted that the cache of ammunition found in a kitchen vent at Poggiani's home was left over from the days when he was a gamekeeper and he had not intended to use it.

But Poggiani had set out to provoke Mr Puttock, knowing how the discharge of firearms distressed youngsters.

It was an act of revenge for which he had shown no remorse.