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, 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 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 sat.

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 has since made a full recovery.

Sentencing the defendants, Recorder Hawks said the scene which had played out was "depressingly familiar".

Fox, of Garth Terrace, York, 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, 24, of Eastmount Road, York, 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.