A THUG who kicked another man in the face for no obvious reason - breaking a nasal bone - has been jailed. 

The victim needed 10 stitches to a wound in his face after Ian Leybourne’s sudden attack, said Kelly Clarke, prosecuting at York Crown Court. Doctors told him he had a broken bone in his nose.

The 40-year-old was on bail at the time for trying to bite a police officer and aggression towards teenagers in separate incidents.

His barrister Gabrielle Coates said: “At the time he was going through difficult personal circumstances. His mental health at the time was concerning.”

Judge Simon Hickey told Leybourne the victim of the kick in the face had been “simply sitting on a bench outside a car park in the middle of Scarborough”.

Leybourne had approached him, and the pair had “chatted perfectly normally for 10 minutes” before Leybourne stood in front of him and kicked him.

The judge said six months earlier, members of the public had seen “five minutes’ worth of unpleasant violence” involving Leybourne in Scarborough town centre.

Leybourne, of no fixed address, was jailed for 16 months. He pleaded guilty to wounding, affray, violent behaviour in a police station, two charges of assaulting police emergency workers and one of criminal damage.

Ms Clarke said Leybourne has 141 previous convictions including ones for violence, harassment, burglary and breaking court orders.

At 4.30pm on Saturday December 2, 2023,  Leybourne and a woman were involved a series of aggressive incidents towards a group of teenagers and their relatives in Scarborough town centre when it was busy with Christmas shoppers.  

Released on bail, Leybourne had become involved in an incident on June 10, 2024, with another man at a housing association complex in Scarborough. After a support worker separated them, Leybourne smashed two of the other man’s windows and when police arrived to arrest him, threatened to smash his own head against the side of the police van.

He then tried to eat his own shoelaces and they had to be removed from him by force. Taken to Scarborough Police Station he tried to bite one officer and scratched another with bloody fingers, leaving the second officer having to take blood tests to screen for hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases.

Leybourne was again released on bail and at 9.40am on June 29, he accosted the man sitting on a bench by North Street car park, Scarborough.

Ms Coates said since being remanded in custody after the last incident, Leybourne had come off drugs and alcohol and done a catering course in prison as he tried to rehabilitate himself.