Raided Leeds home unearths huge cache of guns, knives, machetes and ninja throwing stars

Officers found modified air weapons, machetes, flick knives, batons, throwing stars and nunchucks.

Leeds Crown Court heard that there were so many weapons that officers struggled to categorise them, grouping them into multiples of 10.

The 43-year-old narrowly avoided jail despite the guns automatically attracting an immediate five-year jail sentence.

He admitted two counts of possessing a prohibited firearm and three of possessing a firearm without a firearm certificate.

Prosecutor Duncan Ritchie said officers went to the address on Harley Drive, Swinnow, on June 4 last year over an alleged domestic incident that was not proceeded with.

But during a search, they found “many troubling items which caused concern”, Mr Ritchie said.

They found the weapons in numerous areas, including the bedroom, living room and a cupboard.

Among the items found was a BSA 22 rifle with a telescopic sight and silencer, and further other rifles which were also prohibited, along with several paintball guns.

They also found a butterfly knife, knuckledusters, ninja throwing stars, telescopic truncheons and a belt-buckle knife.

Fulthorpe gave police the name of a shop in Leeds where he bought some of the items.

Mitigating, Peter Byrne said that Fulthorpe had not used the weapons but bought the air weapons “thinking they were legal”.

He said that Fulthorpe, who had a “brief spell” in the Army, was simply not aware he could not have the weapons.

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Judge Howard Crowson acknowledged there was no evidence that they had ever been taken out of the property.

He said it was “ignorance” on Fulthorpe’s part, and that the air rifles were only a “small percentage over the permitted law”.

As a result, he said it amounted to “exceptional circumstances” as not to trigger the mandatory five-year jail sentence.

Instead, he gave him the maximum sentence that is suspendible - two years, suspended for two years.

He ordered him to complete 20 rehabilitation days, along with 26 sessions of the Building Choices accredited programme.

Fulthorpe, of Birch Street, Morley, was also put on a six-month GPS tag.

Judge Crowson told him that he perhaps needs to “change his interests”.