A JUDGE lambasted drunken yobbery as he sentenced a man for breaking the jaw of a serving soldier.

Recorder Tony Hawks said Jacob Fox and his co-defendant Carl Osborne were guilty of “feckless and disgraceful” behaviour in their attack on Ryan Kent.

Fox, 20, of Garth Terrace, York, fractured Mr Kent’s jaw with a single punch after a disturbance in the early hours of December 16 last year in Coney Street, York. Teesside Crown Court heard how Fox and Osborne, 24, of East Mount Road, York, were asked to leave a city centre bar when they began smashing glasses at a table where Mr Kent and fellow soldier Lee Connolly were sitting.

The soldiers followed them outside where the four men squared up before Mr Kent was punched. He suffered a “nasty injury”, said prosecutor David Gordon, which required repeated hospital surgery.

Mr Kent had since made a full recovery and was about to go on active service in Afghanistan, the court heard.

Sentencing the defendants, Recorder Hawks said the scene which had played out was “depressingly familiar.” He said: “Drunken people who are punched in the street sometimes fall down and die.

“People want to go out and enjoy themselves in town centres. They don’t want to see people like you brawling. It is unpleasant and frightening.”

Fox who admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm and affray, was given a 51 week jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work in the community.

Osborne who admitted affray, will be sentenced at a later date after an “all options” report was ordered to assess him.

He had been serving a suspended sentence at the time of the offence.

Bailing him, Recorder Hawks said: “You are making life very difficult for any judge who does not want to lock you up.”