Father and son banned from town after unprovoked attack
A father and son involved in a street attack in Mid Wales have been given suspended sentences.
Geoffrey Harper and his son Ashley Harper received a suspended sentence after they admitted assaulting Gareth Isaacs, who was kicked and punched and left with serious facial injuries following the incident in Welshpool on June 17 last year.
Ashley Harper went up to him and asked him if he was "big Gareth?" They then set about him in what witnesses described as a horrible attack.
Judge Niclas Parry, sitting at Mold Crown Court, said that it was a "cowardly two against one revenge, unprovoked attack".
He said members of the public watched as they repeatedly punched him – one witness told how he "stood no chance."
The defendants each received 12 months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 250 hours unpaid work.
Judge Parry ordered each of them to pay £500 compensation. He made a restraining order banning both men from entering Welshpool for the next 12 months.
Geoffrey Harper, 54 of Bushbury, and Ashley Harper, 28, of Wolverhampton, were warned that they could face up to five years in jail for breaching the restraining order.
Prosecutor Emmalyne Downing said that Mr Isaacs had been out for the evening. He had seen the two men earlier and recognised them as two men the landlady of the Wellington pub had previously asked him to ask them to leave the premises. He did so and they left with no fuss.
That night after a night out he was walking down Broad Street when he was approached by both men.
