A drunken thug who racially abused his Romanian neighbour after smashing through his front door has been jailed.

Scott Foster, 26, at one stage angrily grabbed his terrified victim around the neck during the late-night tirade of abuse, which lasted for 20 minutes.

The defendant, of Allonby Street, Flimby, denied racially aggravated common assault.

But magistrates in Workington convicted him after a trial.

During his sentencing at Carlisle Crown Court, prosecutor Wayne Jackson told how the victim was relaxing at home in Chapel Street, Flimby, at 11pm on January 11 last year when Foster arrived outside his house.

He was yelling and banging on his front door and window.

Mr Jackson said: “He was shouting ‘Get out of the house. I don’t like Romanians.’ During the course of that shouting, he [Foster] ripped his own T-shirt off.”

His Romanian neighbour had opened his front door and tried to calm Foster down but the defendant continued shouting and demanding that his neighbour come outside and fight him.

The victim managed to close the front door but such was Foster’s determination to confront him that he kicked and smashed his way through it.

Once inside the house, he grabbed his neighbour around his neck.

The victim – pleading with him to go – finally managed to push away Foster, who appeared to be drunk.

The defendant was arrested a short time later.

Foster later said he was annoyed because he believed his neighbour had been into his garden.

Marion Weir, for Foster, said her client committed the offence while he had been drinking but had now expressed genuine remorse.

Miss Weir outlined how Foster had suffered a brain injury as a child as a result of an operation which went wrong.

“That’s had a profound effect on his life,” said the barrister.

She said that Foster, whose mother and sister were in court to support him, had now become a father and had taken steps to keep himself out of trouble, including abstaining from alcohol.

Jailing Foster for six months, Recorder Ahmed Nadim noted that at the time of the attack he was already on two suspended sentences – one for two battery offences and one for an assault causing actual bodily harm.

Recorder Nadim added that he would not activate the earlier suspended sentences.