A man has been jailed for four months for making threats to kill an MP in a Facebook post.
Mark Sands, 51, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, threatened to go to the home of his local Conservative MP, Caroline Ansell, and stab her “to death”.
He admitted making the threats, at a hearing at Hastings Magistrates’ Court last month.
The factory worker, of Upperton Gardens, was sentenced at Brighton Magistrates’ Court.
The court heard Sands had been angry at proposed disability cuts last November and posted on his Facebook page: “If you vote to take £30 off my money, I will personally come round to your house… and stab you to death.”
Magistrates were told he posted additional messages including “End poverty, kill a Tory now” and, under the political views section of his profile, had written “Kill your local MP”.
An image of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox also featured on his page alongside the words “sawn-off 2.2”.
He was charged after police said he had made “a credible threat”.
In a victim impact statement read in court, Ms Ansell said the threats were “chilling” and led her to close her personal Facebook account.
Her statement said: “It felt like a brush with something sinister.”
Madeleine Priestley, defending Sands, said: “He has, for some time, been prescribed anti-depressants.
“He suffers from anxiety and physically he suffers, including from fibromyalgia.”
Speaking to the BBC, Ms Ansell said: “I remember where I was when I picked up the call from my local police to say that they had seen a credible threat against my life and that a local man had been arrested and was in custody.
“I was at home – it was a Sunday morning – and I wasn’t expecting that.”
Ms Ansell said she had become accustomed to “low level abuse” as an MP, “but this did feel tangibly different”.
