A teenager who punched a man in the face in a busy club has been told that he could easy have found himself in the dock facing years in prison for murder or manslaughter. A judge told Ashton Heale that young men like him need to realise a single punch can take a life.
Swansea Crown Court heard the incident happened in the Fiction club in Swansea city centre in the early hours of June 23 last year when a "verbal altercation" between two groups of men on the dancefloor ended with Heale punching a male in the face. Door staff at the venue alerted police who were on patrol in Wind Street to the incident and the defendant was arrested at 3.13am. In interview he admitted the offence but said he had not intended to cause any harm.
The court heard the casualty was taken to hospital and had numbing injections to his mouth and medics then found he had three broken teeth. One tooth was missing and has never been found. The court heard the injured man has since undergone dental surgery and has had a denture fitted to fill the gap in his teeth and has made several further trips to a private dentist for more work. The court heard he has been warned that he may lose more teeth in the future due to nerve damage.
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Ashton Heale, aged 19, of Tycoch Road, Tycoch, Swansea, had previously pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions. Andrew Evans, for Heale, said the defendant – who was 18 at the time of the offence – realised the consequences of what he did that night could have had even more serious than they were. He said a pre-sentence report along with references before the court showed the events in Fiction were out of character for a young man who "caring and hardworking" and he said it was very unlikely that Heale would have committed the offence had he not consumed as much alcohol as he had. For the latest court reports sign up to our crime newsletter here.
Judge Geraint Walters told Heale that in his years in court he had sentenced young men sitting on the very same chair in the dock where the defendant was sat to many years in prison or even to life sentences for one-punch manslaughters and murders. He said young men needed to realise that a single punch can result in death.
The judge said members of the public may be surprised to hear that the starting point for sentence for an assault of the type before the court was one of nine months in prison before any discount for a guilty plea. He said the aggravating features in the case – the location and the fact the defendant was under the influence of alcohol – meant that sentence would be increased to 12 months and with the required one-third discount for the guilty plea that was reduced to eight months. The judge said as the sentence was one of less than two years he was required to consider the "imposition guidelines" and on those guidelines it could not be said there was not a reasonable prospect of rehabilitation.
Heale was sentenced to eight months detention in a young offenders institution suspended for two years and was ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work along with a rehabilitation course. The judge told the defendant it was appropriate that "you put your hands in your pocket" and pay some compensation to his victim and he made a £3,000 compensation order to be paid at the rate of £100 per month
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