A British inventor has been charged with a string of crimes – including a sex assault and threats with a weapon – after an incident in Malmesbury.
Police swarmed the market town following reports of a man naked from the waist armed with a knife on Saturday afternoon (2 August).
In a previous public statement Wiltshire Police said a suspect is believed to have “assaulted and threatened members of the public with the knife”.
However, the force has now confirmed that the item is actually believed to be a piece of broken pot or similar, not a knife. It also confirmed that nobody sustained knife wounds.
Award-winning inventor Thomas Lawton, known as Tom, was arrested by officers and has since been charged with a string of offences.
The 49-year-old, of High Street, Malmesbury, has been charged with sexual assault, common assault, two counts of threatening a person with an offensive weapon in a public place and two counts of criminal damage.
He has been remanded into custody and is due to appear at Salisbury Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning (5 August).
“We would like to thank the public for their support while this investigation was carried out”, a Wiltshire Police spokesperson said.
According to Lawton’s website, he is a “world-renowned Inventor, Artist, and Wonderer”, who previously won the “prestigious US Green Dot Award for environmental excellence”.
He was also the star of his own TV show, Tom’s Fantastic Floating Home. The programme, about his house boat, aired on Channel 4 in 2014.
