A JAIL term of almost four years has been handed to a Carlisle man who walked into a stranger’s home and kidnapped a two-year-old girl while he was high on drugs.

When a quick-thinking bystander intervened to rescue the child, taken by 38-year-old Andrzej Jasinski after he had attacked her grandfather, the kidnapper said: “This child belongs to Jihad,” a reference to holy war.

And after his arrest, he told police officers he knew the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The bizarre behaviour was the result of Jasinski’s drug abuse, Carlisle Crown Court heard. The defendant admitted kidnap and an actual bodily harm assault on the girl’s 63-year-old grandfather.

Prosecutor Gerard Rogerson outlined the facts.

The offending began on the morning of September 9 last year as the child’s grandfather looked after her at his terraced home in the city’s London Road area.

It was 9am, and the child had been sitting on her grandfather’s knee in the living room, watching TV when Jasinski appeared at the front window.

“He was standing close to the window, looking through it and smiling,” said Mrs Rogerson. At first the grandfather thought the stranger was simply showing an interest in the child playing.

But then Jasinski walked uninvited through the front door and into the living room.

He asked the grandfather what the sleeping arrangements were in the house and where were the girl’s parents. Jasinski then said that the police were looking for him and he needed his mobile phone.

The man refused and tried to usher Jasinski out of the house but as he did this a scuffle developed and spilled out on to the street.”

Jasinski punched [the grandfather] to the left side of the head, causing him to fall to the ground, striking his head on a parked car.”

At this stage, the court heard, Jasinski went back into the man’s house and picked up the girl before taking her outside and – after again punching the child’s grandfather – he ran away with girl.

The grandfather tried to follow felt too unwell after the assault. “He shouted for help from people who were nearby,” said Mr Rogerson.

Two passers-by responded: a woman said she would follow the fleeing Jasinski in her car while a van driver who was nearby gave chase on foot.

He returned a short time later, with the child in his arms. As he retrieved the child from Jasinski, the defendant said: “That child belongs to Jihad.”

That unsettling behaviour continued when Jasinski was at Carlisle’s Police HQ. Mr Rogerson said: “He claimed that he knew Vladimir Putin and had his DNA in his house.

He made repeated references to Jihad and said he was a king in Poland and went on to describe how he would line people up and shoot them.

“He demonstrated his actions as if he was holding a gun. He rambled incoherently for some time.”

Mr Rogerson said the defendant’s previous convictions had included an arson offence in 2019, committed when he set fire to a house of multiple occupation where he lived.

The court heard also that in 2022 Jasinski was diagnosed with a drug-induced psychosis after he was found bare-chested and brandishing a knife on a local street.

The court heard that the child had been smiling an laughing during he abduction, and appeared to think what was happening was a game of some kind.

Jeff Smith, defending, said Jasinski could provide no explanation of why he behaved as he did on that day last September.

“He very much regrets doing what he did,” said the lawyer. Mr Smith added that at the time of the offending, Jasinski had been well thought of by his employer.

Judge Nicholas Barker said he was satisfied that Jasinski was a dangerous offender. The judge noted a psychiatrist’s assessment that at the time of the kidnap, Jasinski was suffering from “grandiose and delusional” thinking.

“You were suffering from an acute psychotic mental state, which was drug induced,” the judge told the defendant.

He jailed the defendant,  who formerly lived at Thomson Street, Carlisle, for 46 months.