A TEENAGE boy who attacked a teacher and poked another pupil in the eye with a pair of scissors has been given a two-year anti-social behaviour order.The East Anglian Daily Times successfully petitioned to have reporting restrictions lifted on 14-year-old Mark Harris, of Grove Road, Bury St Edmunds, who has been banned from school grounds and a public park, in order to protect the public from his persistent nuisance behaviour.

A TEENAGE boy who attacked a teacher and poked another pupil in the eye with a pair of scissors has been given a two-year anti-social behaviour order.

The East Anglian Daily Times successfully petitioned to have reporting restrictions lifted on 14-year-old Mark Harris, of Grove Road, Bury St Edmunds, who has been banned from school grounds and a public park, in order to protect the public from his persistent nuisance behaviour.

Harris, who was sentenced at Bury Youth Court yesterday, had previously admitted two counts of assault, two further of using threatening behaviour and one of criminal damage in the same month, and has a number of previous convictions, the court heard.

Prosecuting solicitor Paul Forshaw told the court Harris, who was accompanied at the hearing by his mother, had attacked Claire Sinclair, a teacher at the Albany Centre, Bury St Edmunds, on September 21 this year.

He said: “He was removed from class after jumping on furniture, but tried to force his way back in. When he was stopped by Mrs Sinclair he punched her twice in the left arm and kicked her in the shins.”

On September 27 he then used threatening behaviour towards Albany Centre headteacher Mary Barker.

Mr Forshaw said: “He poked a fellow pupil in the eye with a pair of scissors and threw pens at the same pupil. When the teacher tried to make him leave he hid the scissors up his sleeve and threw a table across the room.”

When attempts were made to restrain him, “he was kicking out and abusive” and had to be restrained on a mat in the school gym until police arrived.

The court was told how earlier in September, after a run-in with another boy over some cigarettes on a playing field in Bury, Harris punched the boy in the chin, leaving him needing hospital treatment.

He had also punched and broken a glass window at a garage in Tayfen Road after “losing his temper” when he over-inflated his bike tyre and it exploded.

Harris had also hurled abuse at a council officer who was taking pictures of Grove Park, a community garden close to the boy's home which had been vandalised.

Claire Lockwood, defending Harris, said he had “complex emotional difficulties”. She said his crimes were not premeditated or sophisticated, but the result of a loss of temper, and he had shown remorse.

Sentencing Harris, who is no longer attending the Albany Centre, chairman of the bench, Sandy Carmichael, said: “We find you behaved in an anti-social manner and an order is necessary for the protection of persons in the community from further anti-social behaviour.”

Under the ASBO, Harris is banned from the grounds of King Edward VI Upper School, where he was also formerly a pupil, from associating with another youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and from the Grove Park community garden, for a period of two years.

He is also subject to a strict six-month intensive supervision and surveillance programme, a three-month curfew between 7pm and 7am and his mother is subject to a six-month parenting order.