By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:47, Monday, 14 January 2013

A man thrown out of a family New Year’s Eve party returned to the house a short time later with a knife.

Paul Elliot, 31, then started fighting with three men who tried to throw him out again.

He suffered bruises to his face and legs as the three “robust young men” grappled with him in the incident in December 2011.

But he injured two of them – one suffered bruising and another received a more serious injury when the knife went right through his shoe and into his foot.

At the city’s Crown Court, Elliot, of Upperby Road, Carlisle, pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding Craig Rayson and causing actual bodily harm to Alistair Dixon.

He was given a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid community work. Elliot will have to do the community work when he returns to Britain between spells as working with his father on a pipeline in Kazakhstan.

He was also made to pay £500 each to the two men he hurt, with £800 court costs.

Prosecuting counsel Tim Evans told the court Elliott – who had been drinking “far too much” – was in “a state of some upset” when he returned to the party after being ejected.

He later told police he could not remember going home to fetch the knife, although he accepted he must have done.

The judge, Recorder Kevin Grice, told Elliot the two men were quite entitled to act as they had done, even though they injured him.

“You really can’t complain about it,” he said. “Quite understandably they took the view that you were a potential threat after you returned to the scene of a potential altercation armed with a knife.

“It should have been a happy occasion for everybody, but thanks to you it turned into anything but.

“You really ought to have known a good deal better.”

The judged told Elliot he was lucky not to have caused more serious injury.

“It is a matter of fortune whether someone is seriously injured or not in these circumstances,” he said.

“From such circumstances, unhappily, people have lost their lives.”

First published at 11:45, Monday, 14 January 2013
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk