A TEENAGER has been "playing fast and loose" with the criminal justice system since his unprovoked city centre left a man with a life-changing brain injury, York Crown Court heard.
Harry Elmer-Foster, 18, has not paid a penny of the £5,000 he was ordered to pay recruitment consultant Peter Wright and had done only 35 of the 200 hours' unpaid work part of his punishment, York Crown Court heard.
"He has been playing fast and loose with the system," the Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC said.
On March 14, Andrew Semple, prosecuting told him Mr Wright had had to have an operation to relieve swelling on his brain, cannot drive and is mentally and physically scared by the single punch with which Harry Elmer-Foster, 18, knocked him out on Bootham last November year.
The judge told Elmer-Foster he was lucky he wasn't facing a charge of murder or manslaughter and that he was "wallowing in self-pity".
However, he suspended a prison sentence of two years for two years on condition Elmer-Foster did 200 hours' unpaid work and a five-month nightly curfew at his father Paul Foster's address in Cayley Close, Rawcliffe, and ordered him to pay £5,000 compensation.
When Elmer-Foster came back to court and admitted breaching the suspended sentence, having only done 35 hours, the judge said: "He came about as close to a custodial sentence as anyone can.
"I am not at all happy with this situation. I am considering resentencing him."
He read a court register showing that on April 11, York magistrates had had to protect the father from the son with a domestic violence order banning the son from his father's address for 28 days.
Defence barrister Fiona Clancy told him Elmer-Foster had moved to his grandmother's and continued the curfew, but now had to leave that house because he had caused problems there, and his father was prepared to take him back.
Elmer-Foster was prepared to sell his go-kart to pay the compensation and had emotional and mental problems.
The judge said: "I will, with considerable hesitation, defer sentence for four months" until 28 September so Elmer-Foster could pay the compensation and do the unpaid work.
He told Elmer-Foster that if he doesn't get a good report from the probation service he would go to jail.
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