A man who used his four-year-old son to send death threats to his former partner has been jailed for two years.Sahkai Weeks, of Fentons Drive, Pembroke gave the child three handwritten letters addressed to Renee Williams, threatening to kill her.The 34-year-old handed the messages to his son on May 31, 2012, while visiting him at school. The incident happened a day after he was released from prison for making threats to his ex-girlfriend.The letters included the statement “I really do want to kill you.”Weeks was charged with threatening to murder, and pleaded guilty to the offence in October.Crown counsel Takiyah Burgess told Supreme Court yesterday: “This is not the first time the defendant has placed letters in his son’s bag with threats against her.”On this occasion, however, fear drove his victim to report the matter to police. Weeks was arrested on June 15 when he allegedly told police: “But I am not out shooting people.”Ms Burgess said putting the threats in writing heightened the gravity of the offence.“Cases of this nature are becoming all too prevalent in our society,” she added.Ms Williams’ nine-year-old son was also terrorised by the threats, Ms Burgess stated.Defence lawyer Leonard DeRosa-Holder said Weeks was abandoned as a child by his mother, comes from a background of deprivation, and “lacks impulse control”.“Ninety-nine percent of his peers score higher than him,” he added.He said his client received a traumatic brain injury after a beating in September 2010.However, Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons noted that Weeks’ “tendency to flout the law” predates that injury.The Supreme Court heard Weeks has several convictions for violence and threats.Weeks told the court: “If I knew that it was against the law, I would not have done it.”He questioned how “a man who killed a lady gets 14 years, but now I am standing here for writing a letter”.Mrs Justice Simmons answered: “Ignorance of the law is no defence.”She told Weeks: “You had just been released from custody for behaving in a threatening manner. It’s often that the behaviour escalates. It starts verbally, then it’s written — then what’s the next thing? Carrying out the threat? That’s why the law must step in.”Weeks said he could move to the UK after his release, but Mrs Justice Simmons retorted: “Unless you get your act together, you’re going to take the same problem to England with you. You have a way to go yet before you’re ready.”She sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment with a 16-month reduction in light of his early guilty plea and psychological issues.An additional eight months was taken off in consideration of his serious head injury, bringing the sentence down to two years.Time spent in custody was also taken into account.Mrs Justice Simmons also placed Weeks on three years’ probation once he leaves jail and ordered him to undergo drug tests and abstain from alcohol.He is to have no contact with Ms Williams or her children, and must refrain from entering shouting distance of her residence and place of work, as well as the children’s school.Mrs Justice Simmons further ordered that Weeks submit to a six months’ curfew upon his release, wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, go through rehabilitation and treatment programmes and vocational training.“It’s clear that your own child lives in fear of you, as does the sibling of that child,” she told him. “We are trying to help you. It only remains for you to help yourself.”