A YOUNG father-of-one who told a 65-year-old he ‘danced like a ballerina’ then glassed him in an unprovoked attack in Accrington has been given 14 months youth custody.

Eyewitnesses said Joseph Ridsdale, 19, had been clearly ridiculing Richard Troughton as he was dancing at the town’s Railway pub, on a night out, Burnley Crown Court heard.

MORE TOP STORIES:

And when Mr Troughton came over to see what he had done to offend him, Ridsdale responded by hitting the pensioner over the head with a pint pot, the court was told.

Passing sentence, Recorder Simon Medland QC said it was fortunate that the ‘gaping wound’ caused to Mr Troughton’s eyebrow had not been half a centimetre lower as it would have lacerated his eyeball.

“Unfortunately for him, a 65-year-old man enjoying himself in a pub, for no good reason you insulted the way in which he was behaving,” said Mr Recorder Medland.

“He came to ask if he had done anything to offend you. It is clear he was acting in a peaceful and emollient way. You squared up to him and for absolutely no reason you struck him over the head with the glass which was in your hand.”

Ridsdale, of Marsden Street, Accrington, who admitted assaulting Mr Troughton on December 4 at an earlier hearing, will serve his sentence in a young offenders’ institution.

Stephen Parker, prosecuting, said Mr Troughton had been to a number of pubs that night, having a few pints in each, before ending up at The Railway where, as was often the case, he went for a dance.

Ridsdale told police he had, with friends, drank two litres of spirits and a ‘crate of Strongbow’. Onlookers described him as unsteady on his feet before launching the attack.

Emma Gilsenan, defending, said that the defendant, who had a young son, accepted full responsibility for his actions and had not drank since the incident in early December.

She told the court the attack was out of character and he had done a great deal of growing up since the night in question and wanted to turn his life around, and attend college to study plumbing.