AN Acomb vandal who smashed the windscreen of a York bus has been locked up for four months.

Bus company First York welcomed the jailing of Kevin Ian Scott, 18, for smashing the windscreen of a Number Seven bus as it passed through the Chapelfields estate.

Attacks on buses on the estate have forced the company to suspend its late-night service beyond Ridgeway, Acomb, on at least two occasions, and police had mounted a guard on buses to try and prevent vandalism and other incidents.

"I am pleased to see that some action has been taken to protect our customers and staff. I hope other potential trouble makers take note of it," said First York's general manager Brian Asquith.

"We have had problems in Chapelfields for a number of years and I am glad to see that the community is taking it very seriously."

Prosecutor Vivienne Walsh told York Magistrates Court that Scott struck just before midnight on July 17, near the Bramham Road shops bus stop.

The driver tried to steer the bus out of the way as the drunken teenager hurled an object at it.

But the missile smashed into the left side of the windscreen, covering the driver with flying glass.

Fearing for the safety of himself and his four passengers, the driver sped off the estate as quickly as he could, and did not stop until he reached Beckfield Lane.

"It must have been a very frightening offence for the bus driver," presiding magistrate Michael Dadd told Scott.

"It is a totally unacceptable level of behaviour. You caused great distress to people. You are very lucky, as the prosecution said, that you did not cause a much more serious incident. You could have found yourself in custody for a great deal longer."

Scott, of Chapelfields Road, Acomb, who has a drink problem, pleaded guilty to causing £520 criminal damage to a bus.

He had only been released from prison a few weeks earlier, halfway through a five-month sentence for unlawful violence in Acomb centre, two public order offences in a Chapelfields shop, and carrying an offensive weapon during a violent incident in which a co-accused carried an air pistol. On that occasion, armed with a half-empty vodka bottle, he and a 16-year-old fellow drinker from the west part of York confronted two girls in a Clifton pizza takeaway.

Magistrates ordered Scott to serve 38 days more of the earlier sentence and added 90 days for the vandalism.

For him, Damien Morrison said he had had eight to ten pints of very strong lager and two cans of cider that evening and remembered nothing of what he had done after about 8pm.

When not in drink, Scott was an "amiable" person, but he had to tackle his alcohol problem.

Sending him to a young offenders' institution would give him a chance to take courses in anger management and alcohol abuse.