Scaffolding boss hit customer with bar stool in pub brawl

Jonathan Sargeant, who runs a scaffolding company, was due to have been sentenced at Ipswich Crown Court on Monday (September 12) but Judge Martyn Levett adjourned the case to later in the week to allow more information to be obtained about a previous conviction for violence.

Sargeant, 49, of Middleton Hall Cottages, Sudbury, admitted unlawful wounding.

Nicholas Bleaney, prosecuting, said the offence was committed in the North Street Tavern in Sudbury on December 28 last year.

He said Sargeant, who had been drinking, had been a nuisance to some customers who were playing pool and had interfered with their game.

Mr Bleaney said Sargeant was asked to leave the pub by the landlord and during a brawl that followed Sargeant’s wife had ended up on the floor along with the victim of the wounding charge who was struck twice on the head with a bar stool by Sargeant.

Sargeant was also seen to kick out at the victim while he was in the ground, said Mr Bleaney.

In a statement read to the court, the victim described the attack on him by Sargeant as “ vicious and cowardly”.

He said he had needed eight staples inserted in a cut to his head and had suffered nightmares as a result of what happened

Gethin Payne for Sargeant said his client had been provoked by being punched in the face and his wife being thrown to the floor before he used any violence

He accepted that Sargeant may have been annoying or getting in the way of people trying to take pool shots but said he hadn’t been the first person to use violence.

He said his client accepted that although he was initially acting in self defence he had then gone beyond that and had used excessive force.

Mr Payne said Sargeant had had a difficult time in the last seven years since his wife nearly died giving birth to their son who initially wasn’t breathing.

He said his client ran a scaffolding business which employed three people who would lose their jobs if he was sent to prison.