A VIOLENT thug has been jailed for ten years after he was caught on CCTV attacking two men outside a York pub.

Ryan Lewis MacLeod, 22, set about the two strangers without provocation in a drug and alcohol-fuelled rage outside the Castle Howard Ox last November, York Crown Court heard yesterday.

He then went on the run for almost three months, sparking a massive police manhunt and public appeals.

Almost three years earlier, MacLeod had left a 17-year-old man with permanently damaged vision in another unprovoked attack in Coney Street. He was on parole from that four-year sentence when the pub attack happened.

Victims Gavin Leedham, 33, and Graham Sanderson, 50, were out for an after-work drink when MacLeod launched his assaults.

They were knocked unconscious and left with blurred vision and severe headaches caused by delayed concussion, as well as broken ribs and severe bruising after the attack outside the pub, in Townend Street in The Groves, on November 10, last year.

MacLeod was finally arrested in February when police found him hiding in an airing cupboard in a house in Clifton, and recalled him to prison for the earlier offence.

Now he faces another seven years behind bars after the Recorder of York Judge Stephen Ashurst handed him an extended sentence. The judge branded the incident a “shocking and sustained” attack.

He told MacLeod: “You are a violent thug, and you know it.”

The attack was caught in its “full gory detail” by CCTV, and it is astonishing the two victims were not more severely injured, he added.

He said: “This court has seen many people standing trial for murder when they have delivered one of two of these blows.”

Prosecuting, Andrew Semple said Mr Leedham was already on the ground when MacLeod delivered a “flurry of blows” and stamped on his prone body. He left the area only to come back to start another frenzied attack on Mr Sanderson.

He smashed his elbow into Mr Sanderson's face, sending him unconscious on to a table, before going over to hit him in the head again.

At the time, MacLeod was using steroids and drinking heavily, and showed all the signs of “roid rage”, Judge Ashurst added.

MacLeod had pleaded guilty on two counts. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and must serve at least seven years for the wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm on Mr Leedham.

He was also handed a four-year concurrent sentence for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Mr Sanderson.