A DRUG addict who threatened to stab two schoolboys while stealing their mobile phones has been jailed for 23 months.

John Sokolowski needed to sell the phones for money to pay his drug dealer, Bolton Crown Court heard.

Sentencing him to prison, Judge Elliot Knopf told Sokolowski: “You are a further example of the many we see in this court whose lives have been wrecked by addiction to class-A drugs.”

Peter Cave, prosecuting, told how on March 25, a 15-year-old boy was walking in Deane Road, Bolton, in his lunch hour from a Bolton College mechanics’ course, when he was approached by Sokolowski.

The two knew each other as they lived nearby and so when Sokolowski asked to look at the mobile phone the boy was carrying, he handed it over.

But Mr Cave said that, instead of handing it back Sokolowski walked away, pursued by his victim for almost half-an-hour before the thief turned and warned him: “Go away or I’ll stab you.”

Two days later, a 14-year-old boy got off a bus in Bolton town centre and was walking past McDonald’s in Deansgate at 9pm when he was approached by Sokolowski who demanded his mobile phone.

The boy told him it was an ipod not a mobile phone but Sokolowski replied: “I don’t care, just give me that or I’ll stab you”, and moved his hand towards his pocket.

“He was sufficiently scared by the demand and the movement of the hand to hand over his mobile phone,” said Mr Cave.

Sokolowski was arrested in the early hours of the following morning after police found him slumped in a telephone box in Moor Lane.

The court heard that the 14-yearold boy had paid for his mobile phone with money he earned from a newspaper round and has lost his confidence since the robbery.

Sokolowski, aged 22, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to robbery and theft.

Colin Buckle, defending, said Sokolowski, who had committed the crimes to pay his drug dealer, had become isolated after both his parents died in the past four years.

He stressed that he has demonstrated remorse for his crimes.