The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A Spalding man who “head-butted” another man during an argument in a bar has been given a suspended jail sentence and a curfew imposed to keep him from drinking in public at Christmas.
Aleks Szerafin (20) had been drinking when the incident occurred in Bentley’s Bar on September 3 last year, Lincoln Crown Court heard.
Passing sentence Judge John Pini QC told Szerafin he “head-butted” his victim after there was some sort of argument about his behaviour.
Judge Pini said that in the scuffle that followed a chain belonging to Szerafin was broken.
The court heard Szerafin went with his victim to a cash machine to get some money to pay for the chain.
A jury cleared Szerafin of robbery but he was convicted of blackmail.
The judge told Szerafin: “The way you went about it was not right.”
Mark Watson, mitigating, told the court Szerafin had been out of trouble for over a year.
Mr Watson said: “He has aspirations to be a trainer in free running. He and a friend have approached the council with a view of starting a business.
“There is a course to be accredited for the training and to pay for that he has enrolled with a local agency to get warehouse work which would be at night.”
Szerafin, of Celadine Close, Spalding, admitted a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on September 3, 2016.
He was also convicted of blackmail.
He was sentenced to nine months in a young offenders institution suspended for 18 months and a two month night time curfew at his home.
The judge told him: “I know you don’t want a curfew but this was drink related and I don’t want you on the streets at Christmas, it is part of the punishment.”
