Host escapes jail after violent assault
A licensee has escaped jail for a violent attack in which he hit a teenager so hard that his head went through a kebab shop window.
Steve Swain, 42, was given a 220-hour community punishment order, a £100 fine and £55 costs when he appeared at Lowestoft, Suffolk, Magistrates Court for sentencing last week.
At an earlier hearing Swain, licensee at Swansons in Market Place, Bungay, was told he could face jail after he admitted assault, criminal damage and carrying an offensive weapon.
The Court heard that he attacked the 17-year-old because he shouted insults at Swain's son. Swain dragged the victim from a kebab shop and punched him so hard that his head went through the shop window.
Roger Allen, mitigating, said the licensee had to put up with provocation from people in the area for some time.
Allen said: "I think it is important you know about the nature of the victims and the provocation my client was subjected to."
A letter from every other licensee in Bungay testifying to Swain's good behaviour was handed to the court.
Staff threatened in early-hours robbery
Robbers threatened staff with hammers and a crow bar during a raid on a West Yorkshire pub in the early hours of Monday morning.
Police said four men wearing balaclavas entered the Aspley pub in St Andrews Road, Huddersfield, at around 1am.
They threatened members of staff and forced the manager to open the safe. The raiders took a "substantial" amount of cash and fled along Wakefield Road in a silver Mercedes car.
Anyone with information is asked to call Huddersfield CID on 01484 436659.
14 arrested after RSPCA raid on pub
Fourteen men have been arrested and bailed in connection with an incident in which more than 100 birds were found in a London pub.
Police officers and RSPCA workers found the birds, which were mainly finches, when they searched the Fountain pub in Bethnal Green on Saturday.
The men, who are aged between 30 and 50 and from various locations across Britain, were arrested on suspicion of cruelty and other offences. They have been bailed until March and April.
Teenager cleared of car-park killing
A teenager who was accused of killing a man in a Kent pub car park has been cleared because there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
The defendant, who was 17 at the time of the incident in July last year, denied killing 42-year-old Graham Wales.
Wales, of Maidstone, died four days after he collapsed in the car park of the Bird in Hand pub in Coxheath.
The judge at Maidstone Crown Court last week told the jury to find the defendant not guilty of manslaughter because there was not enough evidence to proceed.
18 months for unprovoked' assault
A jealous teenager who hit his former girlfriend's new boyfriend with an ashtray at a London pub has been sentenced to 18 months in a young offenders institution.
Robert Carter, 19, of Fairacres Road, Ruislip, admitted wounding Daniel Harris with intent to cause grievous bodily harm when he appeared at Isleworth Crown Court on Monday.
The court heard that Carter's former girlfriend, Danielle Durrant, saw Carter at the Windmill pub in Ruislip Manor on 28 May 2004. Feeling "uncomfortable", she left and went to the nearby JJ Moons where she sat with a group of people including Harris, her new boyfriend.
Carter entered JJ Moons at around 10.30pm then picked up a six-inch glass ashtray and smashed the item on Harris' head. The force was so hard that the ashtray shattered into pieces, the court was told.
Jannick Fielding, mitigating, said Carter was "full of remorse" and had never been in trouble before.
But recorder David Evans said it was a "serious, cowardly, unprovoked and armed attack".
