An operations manager dived on an 87-year-old man and bit him twice during a Dundee social club’s karaoke night.
Car repair boss William Abbott flew into a drunken rage and attacked the pensioner for telling him to stop skimming beer mats across the dance floor.
Dundee Sheriff Court was told that he “dived on” Robert Young and bit him twice during the fracas at the Dee Club in Dundee on February 24 last year.
The jury heard how the attack took place shortly after club vice-president Paul Neave had sung Dean Martin hit Ain’t That A Kick In The Head.
On Tuesday, Abbott was allowed to walk free from court but was ordered to pay £1,000 to his elderly victim and carry out 180 hours unpaid work.
Abbott, 36, denied the charge but was found guilty by a jury after Mr Young gave evidence describing how he had been set upon and bitten twice.
Mr Young said: “I was asking him to leave the club. Somebody else came over and said to him as well.
“He turned round and jumped on me. He bit me on the hand then the arm.”
The court heard that other patrons were “horrified” by what happened and Abbott was described in court as being “off his nut” because he was so drunk.
By the time police officers arrived at the scene they found tables overturned, glass on the floor, and Mr Young receiving first aid. Jurors were shown pictures of a bite injury to Mr Young’s upper left arm.
After a three-day trial, the jury took less than 90 minutes to find father-of-two Abbott, Ettrick Crescent, Dundee, guilty of assaulting Mr Young to his injury in the club in Taylor Street.
Three other charges including assaulting Mr Neave by punching him on the head and recklessly throwing glasses at other customers were found not proven.
Abbott said in evidence that “for some reason” he was asked to leave the club, and was just about to do so when, he claimed, Mr Neave and others forced him to the ground and beat him up.
Prosecutor Kirsten Letford said this was “simply not true”. She said Abbott had been “so aggressive and angry” in the club that he approached an 87-year-old man when he told him to stop flinging beer mats, and took his anger out on him.
The court was told that Abbott was the operations manager of a body shop in charge of a workforce of 10 men.
The court heard Abbott had four previous convictions for violence, but the most recent was from 2010.
Solicitor Iain Houston, defending, said: “He has no specific recollection of doing what he was convicted of.”
