A PUB landlord was left needing 30 stitches after his face was cut when a former care worker threw a glass of beer over him amid a row over lightbulbs.
Giovanni Scarale was having a drink with his girlfriend and friends in Maldon’s Black Rabbit pub when he was approached by landlord Evan Eksteen.
Mr Eksteen had become aggrieved at Scarale and his counterparts for tampering with lightbulbs above their table, an act Chelmsford Crown Court heard was a common occurrence among punters there.
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One man on the table asked the landlord “what are you going to do about it”, to which he asked them to leave.
As Mr Eksteen returned to the bar, he saw Scarale, 22, unscrewing a lightbulb while staring at him, something he deemed to be an attempt to antagonise him.
CCTV footage played to the court showed the landlord march over to the table of the High Street pub where he was physically restrained by Scarale’s friends.
He then knocked Scarale’s cap off and struck him with it, prompting the 22-year-old to throw his beer over him.
However, the glass struck Mr Eksteen and lacerated the left side of his face.
Samantha Lowther, prosecuting, said the landlord needed 30 stitches to treat his seven centimetre long wound.
She added the cut is likely to remain as a scar for life and Mr Eksteen has since been left too frightened to work behind the bar during the evenings.
Steven Levy, mitigating, said his client was “ashamed” of what happened but argued it was never his intention for the glass to strike the landlord’s face.
He said Scarale, who is now a mechanic, felt the light above his table was too bright and the violence that followed was out of character.
Scarale, of Staplers Heath, Great Totham, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm when he appeared before magistrates.
Judge Jeremy Donne KC said: “Both you [Scarale] and he [Mr Eksteen] are fortunate it was not more serious.
“An inch or two higher and that could have been his eye.”
Scarale was ordered to undertake 120 hours of unpaid work, pay £920 in compensation and costs, and was banned from the pub for two years.
He will also be the subject of an electronically monitored curfew between 9pm and 6am for ten weeks.
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