A teenager was ordered to pay £1,000 compensation yesterday to a schoolboy for an unprovoked attack that left him with horrific mouth injuries.

Daniel Macauley's single punch left his 14-year-old victim minus four front teeth and needing eight stitches in the gaping wound.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was walking alone in Hartlepool on Christmas Eve when Macauley,18, pulled up his hood and approached him.

The youngster heard Macauley's friend who was with him say "Don't do it, he's just a kid".

But Macauley fisted him in the nose and mouth and the boy fell to the ground. Four of his front teeth came out and blood poured from his mouth, said Crown prosecutor Jolyon Perks.

The boy ran home and told his father, and Macauley was arrested three days later. He told police that he had been drinking vodka all day and that the effect was to make him "chewy".

Mr Perks added: "He said that he saw the lad who he did not know, and he thought the lad said something so he punched him with his fist.

"He accepted that the lad had done nothing to assault him."

Peter Sabiston, defending, said that when Macauley committed the offence he was going through a bad patch, but he had since made great efforts to progress his life.

He had moved to live with his grandparents and he had had two interviews to join the Army.

Mr Sabiston added: "He shows a degree of maturity now that he did not when he was drinking and taking cannabis and mixing with people that he no longer associates with.

"It's a particularly nasty offence and must have been a very frightening incident for the young man. It seems that he has got a future that he has carved out for himself."

The judge Recorder Adrian Kelbrick told Macauley: "What you did was despicable, absolutely and totally despicable.

"For absolutely no reason whatsoever you lashed out at a 14-year-old boy knocking four of his teeth out requiring eight stitches inside his mouth, ruining his Christmas no doubt."

The judge added: "I don't know if I am doing the right thing or not, I suspect that I might not be. This is going to hurt you, this order that I am about to make, and if you don't do it I am confident you will be going into custody."

Macauley of Arch Court, Hartlepool, was given a two year community order with supervision, 240 hours unpaid work, a four month curfew from 7PM to 6AM and ordered to pay £1,000 compensation at £30 a week after he pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.