A MAN who terrified staff at a Plymouth fast-food outlet with a mask and replica gun has been sent to custody after pleading guilty to affray.

Staff at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Wolseley Road, St Budeaux, became alarmed when they spotted Sonny Parsons peering in the window wearing a home-made balaclava and brandishing an imitation musket.

David Gittins, prosecuting, said it was 12.50am on Saturday, February 8, and the light outside the shop was poor.

Parsons, 20, was looking through the window wearing a woollen beanie hat pulled down over his face, with two eye-holes cut in it, like a balaclava.

He was staring in and holding an object which staff thought was a large knife, but which turned out to be a replica antique musket.

They called the police and Parsons threw the gun to the ground when they arrived.

Mr Gittins said an expert had examined the gun and described it as "a realistic imitation firearm".

When arrested, Parsons, from Boringdon Avenue, St Budeaux, told police he was out wandering about looking for his friend and forgot he had the gun in his pocket.

His previous convictions, dating back to 2006, include offences of public disorder, common assault, assault on police and resisting a constable.

The incident happened while Parsons was on bail, and he is currently in custody for a previous offence.

Nicolas Gerasimidis, for Parsons, said he suffered from acute anxiety, for which he was prescribed diazepam, but this proved a "bad cocktail" with alcohol. In jail, he was now taking buspirone which was proving effective.

The gun, which had no moving parts, was worth £10-20 and Parsons had been planning to sell it to a friend, he said.

Deputy Circuit Judge Lester Boothman said similar hats and hoodies were worn by many young men, and the gun would have looked like a realistic firearm only in the 19th century.

But he added: "This was an extremely stupid thing to do and could have ended up disastrously with an armed police response."

He urged Parsons to continue taking his new medication and imposed a sentence of four months in a young offenders' institution to run concurrently with the sentence he is presently serving.

This means he will still be released on August 24.

Judge Boothman ordered the gun to be destroyed.