An Exmouth teenager has been jailed for beating up two strangers in separate attacks.
Denva-Louis Smith punched a driver through the window of his car so hard that he smashed his glasses and broke his cheekbone.
He was released by police and went on to attack a carpenter who was doing urgent repairs to a flood-damaged restaurant less than a month earlier.
On both occasions he was leading a gang of two other youths who goaded the victims before Smith sprung into violence, Exeter Crown Court heard on Friday (November 29)
The second attack happened after he had been celebrating being let off with a community order by Magistrates earlier in the day for possessing class A drugs.
Smith, a 19-year-old care leaver, already has convictions for 50 offences including ten assaults.
He has two children, the oldest of whom is three.
He had only come out of prison six weeks before he carried out the first assault in August.
Smith, of Mountain Close, Exmouth, admitted two counts of causing actual bodily harm and was jailed for a year and five months in a Young Offenders Institution by Judge Peter Johnson.
He told him: "You have been given chance after chance and to a large extent you have thrown the assistance you were offered back in the face of those who were offering it."
Rob Yates, prosecuting, said the first attack was on a man who was in his car with his wife in Dukes Crescent on August 13 when a member of Smith's group stood in front of it.
The victim remonstrated out of his window and Smith walked up to the car and punched him through the window, hitting the side of his face, smashing his glasses and breaking his cheek bone.
The second assault happened on September 11 when a contact worker was with a team who were carrying out overnight repairs to the Prezzo restaurant in Exmouth.
The court heard that Smith and two friends started goading the workers by kicking one of their vans and then came back about an hour later at 11.15 pm. when one of them lay across the bonnet of a van.
When the victim went to see what they were doing Smith punched and kicked him, leaving him with a gash on his face, a broken cheekbone, and a permanent scar under his eye.
Lee Bremridge, defending, said Smith had suffered an unhappy childhood in and out of the care system but is taking courses in anger management and behavioural change while in jail.
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