December 15, 2017 12.05 pm This story is over 75 months old

Spalding man ‘headbutted’ victim during argument

A suspended sentence.
Lincoln Crown Court inside Lincoln Castle. Photo: File/Lincolnshire Reporter

A Spalding man who “headbutted” another man during an argument in a bar was given a suspended jail sentence.

Aleks Szerafin, 20, had been drinking when the incident occurred in Bentley’s Bar on September 3 last year, Lincoln Crown Court heard.

Passing sentence, Judge John Pini QC told Szerafin he “headbutted” his victim after there was some sort of argument about his behaviour.

Judge Pini said that in the scuffle that followed a chain belonging to Szerafin was broken.

The court heard Szerafin went with his victim to a cash machine to get some money to pay for the chain.

A jury cleared Szerafin of robbery but he was convicted of blackmail.

The judge told Szerafin: “The way you went about it was not right.”

Mark Watson, mitigating, told the court Szerafin had been out of trouble for over a year.

Mr Watson said: “He has aspirations to be a trainer in free running. He and a friend have approached the council with a view of starting a business.

“There is a course to be accredited for the training and to pay for that he has enrolled with a local agency to get warehouse work which would be at night.”

Szerafin, of Celadine Close, Spalding, admitted a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on September 3, 2016. He was also convicted of blackmail.

He was sentenced to nine months in a young offenders’ institution suspended for 18 months and a two month night time curfew at his home.

The judge told him: “I know you don’t want a curfew but this was drink related and I don’t want you on the streets at Christmas, it is part of the punishment.”