A MAN who held a mother and four children hostage in a Ross-on-Wye house has been jailed for five years.

Christopher Bevan drank a bottle of cider and a bottle of Martini before barricading the doors and arming himself with three knives.

He made threats to slit the victims' throats then mutilated himself in the face, boasting: "Pain doesn't mean anything," said prosecutor Tariq Shakoor.

Armed police rushed to the house on January 20 this year and negotiated with Bevan all night to give himself up.

During talks with a senior officer he demanded that the children should be swapped with neighbours he held a grudge against, Worcester Crown Court heard.

But he let the hostages go one by one and finally surrendered 11 hours after the terrifying siege began.

Bevan, aged 33, of Old Market Close, Ross, pleaded guilty to five counts of false imprisonment and three of making threats to kill.

He also admitted assaulting a neighbour and causing him actually bodily harm and affray.

Mr Shakoor said Bevan had an argument with a woman whom he branded 'a grassing prostitute' before drinking heavily.

At a house he started shouting racist comments and smashing up property before barricading the front door with weight-lifting apparatus and the back door with a sofa.

Drunken ranting

He held a knife in each hand and tucked a third in his waistband. He selected a child and warned: "You're first", then made a slashing motion across his own throat.

After stabbing himself in the face and licking the blood, he cut his own chest. His drunken ranting on a mobile phone to police was recorded.

Mr Shakoor said: "His words made it horrific for the victims, who were in real distress. He made gestures that he was going to cut the children's throats and warned they would be minus a mum."

But at 3.24 am he released the first child. The children were traumatised and the woman collapsed once she was freed. All the victims were taken to hospital.

During another incident in December last year, the defendant beat up a man who had slapped his own partner and threatened to cut his head off with an axe. A month later he branded the same man 'a wife-beater' and while drunk brandished a large knife outside the man's home, said Mr Shakoor.

Bevan had a 15-year criminal record which included violence, harassment, affray, threatening behaviour, criminal damage and drug possession.

Jeremy Wright, defending, said he had been a victim of violence when a child and was now a perpetrator.

He had lost control when very drunk and could only recall the first hour of the siege.

Recorder Thomas Dillon QC told Bevan he had been blighted by drink and violence throughout his life.