A GUNMAN high on drugs brought terror to a Huddersfield school.

Russell Armitage fired shots towards Moldgreen Community Primary School and staff had to move frightened youngsters from the classrooms and playground.

Now Armitage has been jailed for four years.

Staff at the 366-pupil school leapt into action as Armitage fired off an air rifle from the bathroom window of his nearby home.

Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday that the 40-year-old was banned from possessing any weapons because of a six-year jail term for wounding.

But he had used a compensation payment he received for spending too long in custody to buy two air rifles along with equipment such as a laser sight and a silencer.

The incident took place just after pupils had arrived at the school in May last year and Judge Jonathan Rose rejected Armitage’s claims that he had simply been cleaning one of the air rifles and doing test firing at his own garden wall.

Prosecutor Joanna Butler-Savage told the court that the hour-long drama began after a seven-year-old boy told one of the staff that he had seen a man with a gun at one of the nearby houses.

The matter was reported to the deputy headteacher who initially thought that the man was holding some kind of DIY glue-gun.

But when the weapon was pointed in the direction of the school she realised it was a real gun with a thin barrel and a sight fitted to it.

Staff moved all the children from classrooms on the side of the school closest to Armitage’s then home.