Puffing on a celebratory cigarette, Darren Yates walks free from court despite battering a 76-year-old military veteran with his own walking stick.
Yates, 51, was granted his liberty at York Crown Court after video footage of the horrific attack showed him striking the elderly victim at least five times with the stick.
Prosecutor Rachel Kelly said it was about 8pm on 23 July, 2022, when the victim, pensioner Alexander Ibbetson, heard Yates shouting on his mobile phone outside the pensioner’s ground-floor flat off George Street in York.
When Mr Ibbetson, aided by a walking stick, went outside to ask Yates to keep the noise down, the yob turned on him and told him: “Fxxx off you stupid old man.”
When he asked him again to be quiet or move away, Yates threw a punch at him, but missed.
Ms Kelly said although the punch missed, the victim, a former Royal Marine who was in poor health, became unsteady on his feet and toppled over but grabbed hold of Yates and they went crashing down into a bush at the front of the apartment block.
Yates got back up and Mr Ibbetson tried to get back to his feet by grabbing hold of Yates’s shirt. The elderly man remained rooted to the ground but managed to pull Yates’s top off.
But Yates then grabbed hold of the pensioner’s walking stick and began hitting him with it repeatedly.
CCTV footage of the horrific incident showed Yates hitting the prostrate and defenceless man about five times with the walking stick. He then walked off around the back of the block of flats.
Ms Kelly said the victim suffered severe bruising all over his body.
‘Mean and nasty’

Yates, of Turpin Court, York, was brought in for questioning about four months after the attack but initially denied the offence, even claiming the victim had attacked him. However, after he was shown the CCTV footage he owned up and admitted his behaviour was “appalling”.
He was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, pleaded guilty and appeared for sentence yesterday.
In a statement read out in court, Mr Ibbetson said the shocking attack had not just affected him but also his local community.
Prior to the attack he had undergone a major bypass operation and he also suffered from nerve damage to his ankles which affected his balance.
He needed to use a walking frame or stick when he went outside, otherwise “I fall over and can’t get back up”.
He said that during the attack “I felt completely unable to defend myself”.
It was now painful to walk and he had been left with “extensive bruising across my body” which had exacerbated his mobility issues.
Yates had 11 previous convictions for 24 offences including affray, acquisitive crime and driving matters.
Defence barrister Jordan Millican conceded that the attack on the pensioner was “mean and nasty” and said that Yates was “disgusted” with himself.
He said that Yates had worked in the hotel industry for over 35 years but would lose his job if he were jailed.
Deputy circuit judge Deborah Sherwin said that attacking an elderly man in poor health was serious enough to cross the threshold for a jail sentence.
However, she said it could be suspended in part due to the long delay in Yates being charged and the case reaching court and the fact that he had stayed out of trouble since his arrest.
The judge said she had also noted Yates’s remorse in arriving at her decision.
Yates was given a 12-month prison sentence, but this was suspended for two years. He was ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work and pay the victim £1,000 compensation.
He was made subject to a five-year restraining order banning him from contacting the victim or going to George Street.