A BINGE drinker put his parents through “10 years of hell” and lost his job to alcohol, York magistrates heard.

Andrew Crawford Sinclair, 37, now lives in a tent and is banned from going to his parents’ York home or intimidating or harassing them.

Jane Chadwick, prosecuting, said the father feared he would die when the son grabbed him by the throat.

“Don’t ever talk to me like that again,” the son said because the father had asked him to tidy up the mess created by his drinking.

In a separate argument with his mother over a later session of binge drinking, Sinclair lifted a coffee table above his head and threw it to the ground.

“It has been 10 years of hell and misery and I feel this is the last straw,” the father told York magistrates in a victim personal statement.

“He cannot return to live with us because the cycle of depression and alcohol would continue.

“We would like him to get the help he needs.”

Sinclair’s solicitor Graham Parkin said: “He has a tent and lives in a camp site near the centre of York. He realises his situation (with alcohol) needs to be dealt with.”

Sinclair pleaded guilty to assaulting his father on June 29 and criminal damage to the table on July 8.

The CPS dropped a charge of assaulting his mother because she refused to press charges.

Sinclair was given a two-year community order as a direct alternative to prison.

It included 200 hours’ unpaid work, 15 rehabilitative activities and a programme to improve the way he handles domestic relationships and tackles his alcohol problem.

He was ordered to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £90 statutory surcharge.

He was also made subject to a two-year restraining order banning him from going to his parents’ home and harassing or intimidating them.

Mr Parkin said Sinclair’s family was prepared to help finance him through a residential alcohol rehabilitation course.

He had lost his “well paid” construction job when he failed an alcohol test on site and now lives on universal credit, the court was told.