A MAN who struck a fellow nightclub reveller with a glass has been jailed for 20 months.

Aaron White, also known as Aaron Clarke, was sentenced at Dorchester Crown Court after admitting a charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm.

The charge related to an incident in the early hours of October 11 last year in the Aura nightclub in Weymouth.

Prosecutor Adam Norris said White was seen by witnesses to be described in an “unseemly manner” and appeared to be mocking another reveller. The court was told his victim, a man in his 50s, approached White and told him to “show some respect”.

Mr Norris said that immediately afterwards the man felt a blow land on the right hand site of his face and in the hand that struck him White was holding a glass.

He said the defendant was “essentially wrestled to the ground” by somebody else who intervened while the victim was left with blood “streaming from his head”.

He was taken to hospital and had to be taken into theatre for glass to be removed from a wound just above his ear before the laceration was stitched up.

White, aged 23, of Grove Road, Portland, was arrested and interviewed by police and, while he admitted striking the other man, he initially claimed it had been a reaction to a headbutt.

In a basis of plea White accepted he had not been headbutted but claimed he felt threatened.

Richard Tutt, mitigating, said: “His wrong-headed and instinctive response was to punch out at him.

“Regrettably he struck with his left hand and it was that hand that was holding a glass. He had no intention to attack him with a weapon.”

Mr Tutt described the defendant, who works as a recruitment consultant, as a “young man on the verge of making a success of himself” who was “extremely sorry for what has happened”.

He added: “He is under no illusions that the way he behaved on that night was entirely unacceptable and he needs to ensure that there is never a repeat of that behaviour.”

Having asked to address the judge personally, White said: “I profusely apologise to yourself and the victim and to everybody that I have caused harm to.”

Judge Jonathan Fuller said: “The use of a glass as a weapon in a club as all too familiar.” He added that it was “just luck” that the glass had missed the eye of White’s victim. As well as sentencing White to 20 months in prison, the judge also passed an exclusion order banning White from Aura until further notice.