A VIOLENT thug who punched a policeman in the face within days of being given a suspended sentence for assaulting another officer has been sentenced to 38 months detention.
Twenty-year-old Kane O’Brien walked up to Pc Bob Driver in Bury St Edmunds town centre with his fist clenched and hit the officer, who was wearing spectacles, on the top of his right eye, causing a cut which needed nine stitches, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
Six days earlier O’Brien had appeared before West Suffolk magistrates’ and had been sentenced to four months’ detention suspended for 12 months for being drunk and disorderly and assaulting a policeman.
O’Brien, of Exning Road, Newmarket, admitted unlawfully wounding Pc Driver on November 21 and breaching the suspended sentence which was imposed on November 15. Sentencing him to 38 months detention in a young offenders’ institution, Judge Rupert Overbury said that Pc Driver had been called to deal with an incident in Bury town centre and had come across O’Brien.
Quinton Newcombe, for O’Brien, said his client had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the attack.
He said O’Brien had not intended the officer to sustain the injury he did and had apologised at the scene.
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