ROYAL MARINE James Blanchard, 25, was warned on Friday he was "in a world of Trouble" after being convicted of attacking a pub doorman.
Blanchard, a PT instructor, had denied inflicting grievous bodily harm on Christopher Locke by punching him in the face and shattering his jaw.
He claimed at Gloucester Crown Court he was acting in self-defence because
he felt under threat from the doorman and another bouncer at The Warehouse in
Dursley.
But after a three-day trial the jury convicted him and Judge David Lambert remanded him on bail until June 12 for a pre-sentence report.
The judge told Blanchard, of Gredenmeadow Cotgtages, Cwmtillery, near Abertillery, Gwent, he was not making any promises about what the sentence would be. "You are in a world of trouble," he warned.
The trial had been told Blanchard was thrown out of The Warehouse on April 20 last year but returned after disguising himself with a different jacket and a baseball cap.
Inside he punched doorman Mr Locke, breaking his jaw so badly surgeons had to pin the bone together with metal plates.
Mr Locke collapsed shortly afterwards and had to be taken to hospital by ambulance and underwent an operation the following day.
"My mouth was wired together for nine weeks," he said. "I was off work from my day job for nine weeks and I wasn't back on the door for ten."
Prosecuting, Ed Burgess said Blanchard had admitted hitting the complainant after his arrest on October 15.
"He said he had seen the way his friends had been treated earlier when they
were bundled out of the bar and he had seen the two doormen," he said.
"He said that when the doormen came up to him he felt threatened by them and
thought they might behave the same way, so he punched Mr Locke in self-defence.
"He believed they were going to grab hold of him and treat him unfairly as the
others had been earlier."
Blanchard said he was a Marine who had seen service in Sierra
Leone, Northern Ireland and the Gulf and was trained in lethal unarmed
combat techniqes.
Despite his training, he said, he still felt threatened by the aggressive
bouncers, both of whom were significantly bigger than him, and he pushed Mr
Locke back to prevent an attack.
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