AN “ARROGANT” antivaxxer has been jailed for 21 months today (June 16) after being convicted of causing £11,000 damage when he smashed windows at two COVID-19 vaccination centres with rocks.

Paul Edwards, 58, of Warrington, had been arrested by North Wales Police after damaging five windows at a vaccination centre close to the police station at Llandudno on December 14, Mold Crown Court was told.

But prosecutor Anna Price said the following night, he vandalised 25 windows at the OpTIC building on St Asaph Business Park – breaking only one pane of the vaccination centre.

Businesses were affected instead. No disruption was caused to the vaccination programme.

Edwards, representing himself, denied two counts of damaging property.

“Both incidents involve attacks on wider society,” said Judge Rhys Rowlands.

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Anti-vaxxer caused £11,000 of damage in St Asaph and Llandudno, court hears

The judge said Edwards had “genuinely and strongly-held views which were critical of official policies and laws” to protect the population.

But he couldn’t go out and break the law in order to impose his views on others who would have seen the jabs as a lifeline.

Edwards’s conduct was “arrogant and particularly egregious.”

Judge Rowlands told the defendant: “You haven’t shown any insight to the harm your behaviour caused, or its potential to have caused, vulnerable individuals.

“You intended to break into both premises and cause far more damage.”

A security guard was cut by flying glass.

Edwards told the jury he had been trying to obstruct the vaccination programme which was putting the public “in danger”.

He claimed there had been “deliberate scaremongering” and there was “censorship” in Britain.

Communist China had a vested interest in destabilising Western society, he argued.