A chef has escaped jail after being found with a kitchen knife, throwing star and cannabis.

Police in King's Lynn pulled over Oskar Odya's Honda Jazz in the town's Goodwins Road on the night of March 29, when they saw it being driven slowly, with a headlight out.

Lynn magistrates heard they searched the car after smelling cannabis and found a bladed knife in the boot and a throwing star in the central console.

Stacie Cossey, prosecuting, said when they searched Odya, they found a small quantity of cannabis on him.

The court heard Odya, 27, is the head chef at Prezzo in Dereham. He told officers he had brought the knife home from work to cut up cardboard boxes after moving house and had found the throwing star in a park some time earlier.

Odya of Dairy Way, Gaywood, admitted possessing an offensive weapon, possessing a vegetable knife and a small amount of cannabis.

Andrew Cogan, for Odya, said he had lived in England for three or four years after moving from Poland and held down a good job.

He said the offences were 'a genuine mistake' and he had almost had to 'scrape his client off the ceiling' when he told him he could be jailed for them.

He said his client had no previous convictions and asked the bench to consider giving him a suspended sentence.

'He has learned his lesson,' he said. 'This is a decent, upstanding member of society who has not thought through the consequences.' Magistrates retired for just over 20 minutes to consider sentence.

Odya was given 18 weeks' custody, reduced to 12 in acknowledgement of his early guilty plea on both knife charges, suspended for 12 months to run concurrently. For the cannabis, he was fined £370.

He was also ordered to pay a £115 victim surcharge, £85 in court costs and to forfeit the knife, throwing star and cannabis, which would be destroyed.

'I'm very sorry,' he told magistrates before leaving the court. 'I regret everything.'