A TEENAGER who threw an asthma sufferer into a freezing Kidderminster canal after robbing him was sentenced to five years’ detention.

Robert Lainsbury found 20-year-old Alex Pickin hiding in bushes after chasing him from outside a town nightclub on September 30 last year. Worcester Crown Court was told how Mr Pickin had been celebrating a birthday with friends at the Tribe club before they left at 2.35am to hail a taxi.

Another group began verbally abusing them before 19-year-old Lainsbury, who was on bail, rushed over and punched Matthew Preston – one of Mr Pickin’s friends – in the face.

Mr Pickin’s group was then pursued through the streets, with Lainsbury brandishing a house brick in one hand and a traffic cone in the other. But Mr Pickin, who got out of breath because of his asthma, fell behind and tried to hide before being cornered.

He told police the water had been freezing. He stressed he had no intention of ever returning to Kidderminster on a night out. A month earlier, on August 25, the court was told that Lainsbury had gone to a house on the Walshes estate, Stourport, armed with an eight-inch knife. Backed up by two friends also wielding blades, they went to a house to confront Alan Bell.

He made throat-slitting gestures to one of the occupants and a brick and a slab were thrown through a window, said Paul Whitfield, prosecuting. The men fled in a car after Mr Bell refused to come outside and fight.

His father, Stephen Bell, the victim of an assault 10 years earlier, was left housebound through fear by the latest violent incident.

Last year, Lainsbury was released early from an 18-month custodial sentence for glassing a man with a bottle who needed more than 20 stitches in his wound.

Adam Western, defending, said because Lainsbury was still young he had a better chance of changing his behaviour than an older man before it became entrenched and that by pleading guilty to the offences he had shown some remorse.

Judge Tony Hooper QC, said that Lainsbury, of Walter Nash Road East, Kidderminster, posed a significant risk of serious harm to the public in the future.

Besides detention, he extended the teenager’s prison licence on release by two years. He said Lainsbury, who had a record of 15 offences, displayed “a carefree attitude” to crime, minimised his responsibility and disregarded any penalties.

A probation officer had assessed him as “a violent individual who has little regard for his victims”.

Lainsbury admitted robbery, assault, criminal damage, threatening behaviour and carrying a knife.