A pre-Christmas drinker has been jailed for attacking a Good Samaritan who tried to intervene when he was arguing with a woman in the street.
Gary Heath chased victim Alexander Bayley across the street and knelt over him as he lay face down in the road, hitting his head and slamming his face into the pavement.
Mr Bayley suffered a broken nose when he ran into a wall while trying to escape and was already injured before Heath battered him unconscious in the main street of Chudleigh.
Heath, 49, from Chudleigh, whose current address is Langley Crescent, Plymouth, admitted causing actual bodily harm and was jailed for 14 months by Judge Francis Gilbert, QC at Exeter Crown Court.
The judge told him:"This man ran into a wall when you were chasing him. It is an aggravating feature that when he fell on the pavement face down and badly injured, you climbed on his back and banged his head repeatedly into the pavement.
"You ran away leaving him unconscious in the road. He suffered serious injuries and this was a sustained assault in which you intended to cause more harm than you actually did.
"It is aggravated by its location in a public street in the middle of Chudleigh at night when people were coming out of pubs."
Lee Bremridge, prosecuting, said the victim Mr Bayley was out having a drink in the Bishop Lacey pub in Chudleigh three days before Christmas 2012 when he became alarmed by Heath's behaviour.
He said:"He recalls seeing Heath pulling a female around like a rag doll and so he went over to confront him and an altercation took place.
"He ended up on the pavement, face down, with Heath straddling his back and striking him repeatedly around the head."
He said a witness watching from a first floor window saw Mr Bayley fleeing across the street and rebounding off a wall before falling half on and half off the pavement, where Heath followed him and got on his back.
Mr Bayley needed an operation to re-set his nose and 23 stitches in a facial wound after being taken to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
Mary McCarthy, defending, said Heath did not realise Mr Bayley had been so badly injured in the collision with the wall and pinned him down to neutralise any threat from him.
She said:"He says Mr Bayley was heavily under the influence of alcohol and started this confrontation. It was a spontaneous outbreak of violence which resulted in him going over the top."
She said Heath has already spent six weeks in custody after his arrest, been forced to move out of Chudleigh as a condition of bail, and been on a tagged curfew since October.
