AN ELECTRICAL engineer has escaped a jail sentence for glassing a former friend in the face, but must pay him £750 compensation.

Laurence Christopher Stark, 20, claimed that he did not realise he had a pint glass in his hand and was only acting in self-defence when he punched Dean Croft in a late-night incident at York's Ikon and Diva nightclub at Clifton Moor, York Crown Court sitting at Leeds heard.

The glass shattered as it hit Mr Croft's face, causing a cut of more than a centimetre long and other lesser marks where the splinters grazed the skin.

The two men had been avoiding each other in the weeks before the incident because Stark had slept with the girlfriend of Mr Croft's cousin. But Stark had approached Mr Croft in the nightclub.

Judge Trevor Kent Jones told him: "It would be quite impossible not to know you had a pint glass in the hand you were intending to punch with in a fist. It was a deliberate hit with the glass and it was not in self-defence."

The judge added that usually people who glassed others were locked up, but Stark's had been a momentary act completely out of character and the cut it caused was not the most serious.

Stark of Ascot Way, Wigginton, York, denied wounding, but was convicted by a York jury last month. He was ordered to do 240 hours' community punishment and pay £750 compensation to Mr Croft plus £1,000 prosecution costs.

His barrister, Nicholas Johnson, said he had vowed not to visit nightclubs again and was generally someone who never lost his temper.

Mr Johnson said Stark had lost three and a half stone in weight in worry because of the court case. The court heard Stark entirely regretted the period of his life that included the nightclub incident and sleeping with the girlfriend.

The judge read a pre-sentence report and character references including one from Stark's community policeman, who knew him as someone who got on well with an autistic son.

Updated: 10:08 Monday, January 10, 2005