Bottle-wielding thug is jailed

A BOTTLE-wielding thug who attacked a teenager in an Ipswich street has been jailed for a year.Violent Steven Povey lost control when he saw his young victim come out of a takeaway shop in the Whitehouse area of Ipswich and clobbered him over the head with a Smirnoff Ice bottle.

A BOTTLE-wielding thug who attacked a teenager in an Ipswich street has been jailed for a year.

Violent Steven Povey lost control when he saw his young victim come out of a takeaway shop in the Whitehouse area of Ipswich and clobbered him over the head with a Smirnoff Ice bottle.

He was jailed for eight months for assault occasioning actual bodily harm after being found guilty by magistrates in Ipswich and was given a total of a further four months jail for a string of driving offences.

He had earlier admitted offences of drink driving, taking a vehicle without the owner's consent, driving without a licence and driving without insurance.

When he appeared at Ipswich Crown Court on Thursday, Recorder Anthony Bate described his conduct as “disgraceful”.

The court heard that 23-year-old Povey, of Old Foundry Road, Ipswich, approached his victim James Parker, as the 19-year-old left the takeaway shop at about 6.30pm on February 27.

Mr Parker was with his girlfriend and child and later said that he had noticed Povey looking at him in a “strange and unfriendly” way.

Ian Pells, prosecuting, told the court: “He swung the bottle at Mr Parker, having first made it look as if he was going to put the bottle down to the ground.”

The bottle hit the back of Mr Parker's head before smashing. A scuffle ensued and Mr Parker was punched on the nose.

He was later taken to hospital with a badly bruised nose and still has trouble breathing and has a lump on the back of his head.

It was while Povey was on bail for the attack that he committed the driving offences on June 12.

Police in Highfield Road, Ipswich, saw a Nissan Primera being driven at speed. They later found the car in Willowcroft Road in the Castle Hill area of Ipswich.

When they talked to Povey he gave them a false name and date of birth and said he had borrowed the car from a man called Ted.

He later admitted his real identity and a breath test showed he had 91micrograms of alcohol in 100millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mg.

It later emerged he had drunk eight cans of lager and that the vehicle belonged to a man called Eddie Edwards whose house Povey had visited earlier in the day with a woman who took the keys as she left. The pair then took the car from outside the house.

Russell Butcher, mitigating for Povey, said he suffered from depression and had an alcohol problem.

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The sentence

IN sentencing him to a total of 12 months in jail, Recorder Bate told Steven Povey: “You are a 23-year-old unemployed Ipswich man with 16 convictions for some 19 or so offences between 2001 and 2007. It's plain that alcohol is at the root of all your recent offending.”

For drink driving, Povey was given four months' in jail, to run consecutively with the assault sentence. For taking a vehicle without consent, he was given four months, to run concurrent.

For earlier offences of criminal damage and theft from a car, which he had been serving a community order for but subsequently breached that order by committing the latest offences, he was given one month in jail for each offence, to run concurrent.

He was also disqualified from driving for two years.