A MAN who carried out a racist attack on a woman and her husband having a night out with friends was jailed for four years yesterday.

Thomas Honeyman, 21, battered Tracey Mitchell and her husband, Melville, with a bar stool in a pub in Bishop Auckland.

Earlier he had hurled racial and personal insults at Mrs Mitchell as they sat with friends in The Cumberland Arms Hotel, said Richard Bennett, prosecuting.

The couple both needed treatment at Darlington Memorial Hospital after the attack, which left Mr Mitchell with a cut head and his wife with an injured hand after she had tried to protect herself.

Teesside Crown Court was told Honeyman had been sitting at a nearby table on November 1 last year when he began making “rather childish”

comments about Mr Mitchell.

Mr Mitchell had an argument with him before returning to his table, and then the couple became aware of Honeyman approaching them at speed carrying a bar stool above his head, which he brought down with some force on them, knocking them both to the floor.

Honeyman ran outside as customers and staff helped the couple.

Police officers found him walking along the street, bare-chested and bleeding from a cut to the head.

He said that he had fallen over, said Mr Bennett.

But Honeyman was later arrested for the attack and claimed Mrs Mitchell had called him a “dirty, stinking gipsy”.

Honeyman was released on police bail, during which he robbed a man walking alone past The Llewellyn pub, in Ferryhill, County Durham. A total of £90 was stolen.

Bryan Russell, defending, said Honeyman admitted he had gone “spectacularly off the rails” in the later part of last year, but while in prison on remand he had taken part in courses to tackle his drink and drug problems.

Judge Peter Bowers told Honeyman that if he had wanted to be harsh he could have sentenced him to six years in jail.

The judge added: “Unfortunately, these two offences do merit sentences of one after the other, but I will reduce them.”

Honeyman, of Chillerton Way, Wingate, County Durham, was jailed for four years after he pleaded guilty to racially-aggravated actual bodily harm, assault and unlawful wounding and to robbery.