A VIOLENT menace blamed a dairy intolerance for spreading a wave of terror across a town and intimidating his victims into silence.

Cleveland Police last night welcomed a decision by Teesside Magistrates’ Court to hand Peter Francis Hall a twoyear anti-social behaviour order (asbo) banning him from Middlesbrough town centre.

PC John Bonner, of the Middlesbrough District Support Unit, said Hall’s face would be plastered across posters, beer mats and even the backs of buses to ensure Teessiders knew who he was.

He said: “The conditions and length of this asbo should have a direct impact on the community, making Middlesbrough a safer place to live.”

Joan Smith, prosecuting, said Hall’s volatile reputation, fuelled by binge drinking, intimidated his victims into repeatedly retracting statements against him.

Ms Smith said that, during a violent rampage one night, Hall, 30, admitted breaking the jaw of a bystander in an unprovoked attack in a pizza shop, but said he acted in selfdefence when he punched a complete stranger waiting in a car nearby.

He said he was ashamed of himself for the broken jaw attack, in the Bite In, on September 23 last year, for which he is serving a two-year suspended prison sentence.

“I am totally embarrassed by it. I should not have hit him like that, it was totally unprovoked,”

he said.

The 6ft, 14-stone amateur boxer turned property developer admitted that he had previously had a problem with alcohol, but had sought help from a doctor and psychologist and had turned his life around.

He said: “I am allergic to dairy products. I would always drink a pint of milk before I went out but that had a bad reaction when I drank.”

Alex Bousfield, in mitigation, said: “He had a darker reputation in the past but he has now turned things around for himself.

“He has a good reputation in his property business and an asbo will have a negative impact on that.”