Teen admits involvement in violent act (From Free Press Series)

Teen admits involvement in violent act

A teenager who took part in a violent incident in Cwmbran has been sentenced to a community punishment order for 100 hours and ordered to pay £25 costs at Cardiff crown court.

The 17-year-old, who comes from the town, admitted a charge of violent disorder.

Judge Christopher Llewellyn-Jones told him: "You had the courage to plead guilty; you came clean and admitted your responsibility.

"You were to a certain extent a trigger for that violence that night. You simply can't go on behaving in this way."

Prosecutor Carl Williams said five others were also charged with violent disorder.

They all pleaded not guilty and the prosecution offered no evidence against them.

One of the witnesses, said Mr Williams, withdrew a statement and there were discrepancies in the evidence. He said that at about 11.30pm on October 15 a number of youths assembled in the Station Road area of Cwmbran.

The police went to the scene and found they had all been drinking. They were abusive to a man who was struck and pushed to the ground and was left "shaken and bruised".

The defendant was later arrested, initially for being drunk and disorderly. His counsel Leighton Hughes said: "He didn't try to get away with it as many of the others did. He accepts he was part of the incident in which there was unlawful violence.

"He runs the risk of leading a lawless life but he had the decency to plead guilty. His family are thoroughly decent.

"What he did was fall into the temptation of drunken and rowdy behaviour."