A ski-goggle wearing 21 year old who hit a man twice with a metal bar in Helston left Truro Crown Court today with a suspended sentence.

Daniel Stamp, of Meneage Street, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and possession of a weapon after hitting Robert Oates with a weightlifting bar on November 30 last year.

However after a character reference from a community chaplain and an emotional statement from a close friend and neighbour, Judge Christopher Harvey Clark handed him an eight month sentence, suspended for 12 months, with a six month supervision order.

Elaine Hobson, prosecuting, said Mr Oates had been walking along Godolphin Road after a night out, and passed two men, before he “heard footsteps, and was assaulted on the back of the head with something heavy.”

He then stumbled forward and turned to see Mr Stamp, wearing ski goggles and “loping forward” with the bar from a dumb-bell set, before being struck for a second time.

He was able to run away, and nearby police officers who saw Mr Stamp with the weapon arrived and arrested him.

However Nigel Paine, community chaplain with the Peninsula Initiative, which attempts to rehabilitate prisoners upon release, who had met Mr Stamp in 2012 when he was in a young offenders’ facility, said he was “trying to change his life, and move away from his offending lifestyle.”