A MAN considered a potential danger to the public carried out two drink and drug-fuelled bottle attacks on friends in less than a week.

In both cases Graeme Stuart Hampton was said to have snapped, suddenly turning on people with whom he had previously been socialising.

Durham Crown Court heard that both victims consider him capable of causing great harm due to his mood swings, one even saying he feared Hampton would end up killing someone one day.

The 37-year-old former Nissan motor works team leader, of Twizell Lane, West Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, admitted two counts of wounding with intent, arising from attacks on October 9 and 15.

Matthew Collins, prosecuting, said the first victim who had given Hampton a lift to see friends in Gateshead, was struck with a bottle in the face and then repeatedly hit with a baseball bat, after Hampton accused him of stealing his phone.

When he got into his van to drive to hospital, Hampton accompanied him, acting as if nothing had happened.

The injured man required stitches to a deep laceration to the left cheek, plus others to the hairline and back of the head.

Mr Collins said six days later at a house party in Ouston, near Chester-le-Street, Hampton again became aggressive, pushing a bottle into the face of a man with whom he was “play fighting.”

He was treated in hospital for a laceration to the scalp and another to the hand.

Rachel Hedworth, mitigating, said the defendant has used his time in custody since the incidents to rid himself of the addictions which have been behind much of his previous offending, and now acts as a mentor to other inmates trying to overcome substance abuse.

Jailing him for a total of ten years and nine months, with an extended three-year licence period, Recorder Peter Makepeace told Hampton: “When you abuse drugs, or whatever, you are unpredictably volatile, with catastrophic results.”