Kettering pub assault victim brands sentence a 'joke' after attacker is spared from prison

A pub boss has hit out at a ‘disgusting’ sentence after the man who attacked him was spared from prison.

Dave Cooper was working at The Rising Sun in Kettering, which he managed at the time, when he was assaulted by Dominic Watts and had to be stitched up at hospital.

Last week Watts, of Latimer Close in Burton Latimer, was handed a suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay £500 in compensation after admitting assault causing actual bodily harm.

Dave, 54, said: "It’s a snowflake society and it needs to be toughened up a bit because it’s becoming a joke. People will be laughing about this sentence.

"The compensation doesn’t even cover the cost of my financial loss, let alone the effect it’s had on me. I’m disgusted by it.”

Dave, who has since left Kettering and now runs a pub in Devon, had spent the evening enjoying the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid when the assault took place at about 12.30am on May 29, 2022.

Police said he stepped in to break up an altercation when he was assaulted and was thrown onto a table.

Dave said: "I went down like a sack and my forehead went straight onto the corner of the table.

"It split my forehead and my glasses smashed, so the lense went into the side bit of my eye.

"I was very, very lucky. Another centimetre in and it would have gone into my eyeball.”

Thankfully Dave’s vision hasn’t suffered from the incident but he said he still gets a stinging sensation near his eye when he sweats. He said he had to take a few days off work and had to fork out for new glasses.

Watts, 29, was sentenced to 24 weeks in prison, suspended for 24 months, when he appeared at Northampton Magistrates’ Court.

He must take part in mental health treatment and rehabilitation activities as well as paying costs of £85 and a surcharge to fund victim services of £128, alongside compensation.

Dave said he thought the sentence is a ‘joke’ and believes there should be an uplift in punishment for assaults on licensees, just like there is for assaults on emergency workers, because it takes place in their line of work.

He said: "I have been running pubs for 36 years and it’s the worst assault I have ever had.”