An East Malling man has been convicted for taking a dagger to a railway station.

Charles Pearce, 39, was caught on CCTV throwing the weapon against a wall before taking it on to the platform and dropping it on to the tracks at Maidstone East, magistrates heard.

Giving evidence, Gary Watson, who was the station manager at the time, said he had put an alert over the town centre’s emergency radio system after checking the footage.

He said: “I was in my office and I heard some banging noises outside, which made me look at the camera.

"I saw the man outside throwing something against the wall. I wasn’t sure if it was a knife or a screwdriver. Then I saw him bend down on the platform and drop something.”

When officers from British Transport Police (BTP) arrived they searched Pearce, but found nothing.

It was only when they checked the tracks that they found a commando-style knife, with a four-and-a-half inch blade, discarded there. Pearce, of Jasmine Close, was then arrested.

Sgt Mark Dron, who was a BTP officer at the time of the offence, said it was only thanks to engineering works that meant they did not have to stop the power at the station to get to the tracks.

He said: “It looked like a commando dagger. The items around it were covered in condensation but the knife was bone dry, suggesting to me that the knife was recently deposited.”

After his arrest just after 10pm on March 30 last year, Pearce was said to have become aggressive and made racial slurs about Sgt Dron’s colleague Robert McCombe, who was from Scotland.

Pearce did not attend Sevenoaks Magistrates Court but was found guilty of possessing a knife in a public place. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and he will be sentenced at a later date.