A teenager who kicked a man so badly that his leg had to be amputated was jailed for life.

The attack happened just ten days after George Logan had walked free from a detention centre after serving a two-year sentence for manslaughter.

A jury that had just convicted Logan of causing grievous bodily harm was told how in 1998 a single punch thrown by him claimed the life of 18-year-old Danny Ridgewell at a Worthing service station.

Now Logan is behind bars for life under the "two strikes and you're out" laws for an attack on Jamie Pinder, 30, outside a nightclub at Worthing. Mr Pinder, a former soldier with the Parachute Regiment, and Danny Ridgewell's father were both in the public gallery of Chichester Crown Court as Judge Anthony Thorpe passed a mandatory life sentence under the Crime Sentence Act.

Mr Pinder, who was with his mother Shirley, punched the air with relief. John Ridgewell, who wept as the jury was told how his son died, shouted at him: "Remember Danny", but Logan just mouthed an obscenity back.

During a week-long trial, the jury heard Mr Pinder was only just walking without crutches again after his right leg was badly broken during a football match in 1996.

On September 4 last year, he travelled from his home in Lancing to Worthing to have a drink with friends but when he went to Rutherfords nightclub on the pier to meet a girlfriend he was refused entry by a doorman because he was wearing trainers.

Mr Pinder went to wait at the front of the pier where Logan and another man subjected him to an unprovoked attack which left his right leg so badly injured that it finally had to be amputated below the knee last month. The court heard when ambulancemen cut open his jeans they found a hole in his right leg and an exposed bone.

He spent four weeks in hospitals at Worthing and London before returning home with his leg encased in a steel cage. But the jury did not know 19-year-old Logan, who denied causing grievous bodily harm with intent, had only been free for ten days after serving a sentence for the manslaughter of Danny Ridgewell.

Judge Anthony Thorpe told Logan: "This was a vicious and unprovoked joint attack on Mr Pinder. The attack was seen by onlookers as frenzied and ferocious with both of you kicking him like a football in a way they described as sickening.

"The attack continued long after he was lying helpless on the ground, probably mercifully unconscious at least for part of the time with both of you brutally kicking him until the two bones in his lower leg suffered a shattered break and one of the bones in his leg came though the skin.

"The attack was so violent that he has now had to have his leg amputated below the knee and he is, at the age of 30, now seriously disabled for the rest of his life.You have a previous conviction for manslaughter, although I note that the sentence passed then was on the face of it a lenient one, so the judge must have found strong mitigating circumstances - probably your youth.

"Indeed, the tragedy is that a man of your age, because you are only 19, has already committed two such dreadful crimes. Unless you learn to control your aggression, I fear for the safety of the public when you are released."

The judge ordered Logan, of Warner Road, Worthing, should not be considered for parole until he has served seven years but added that it did not mean he would be released at that point and he would probably spend much longer in custody.

After the hearing, Mr Pinder said: "I feel glad that justice has been done. I hope he will never be released because he is a danger to the public. I had just got my leg sorted out after three-and-a-half years and 18 operations. I am gutted because of what he did and I have to try and start my life over again."

Mr Pinder, a soldier for five years, was working as a scaffolder and played centre forward for Lancing in the West Sussex League. He said: "I couldn't believe it when I found out after the attack what Logan had done before and that he had only been out for ten days. That night was the first time I had been out for ages and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Mr Pinder is due to be fitted with an artificial leg and hopes to win help towards starting a new life from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Danny Ridgewell's father said: "Logan is a nutter and life should mean life because he could do it again to someone else. He is a real danger."

The court was told Danny, 18, had gone to Worthing with a friend to celebrate a birthday and booked into a bed and breakfast. He decided to go into the Brooklands Service Station in Brighton Road to buy a soft drink.

Logan was to claim that he took offence at Danny belching in his face but a sales assistant said the Worthing teenager was "champing at the bit for a fight". He rammed the door of the soft drinks cabinet twice on Danny's arm before swinging a vicious punch to the side of his head. As Danny fell to the floor unconscious, Logan turned to his friend and said: "Out with one punch. Do you want some as well?"

Danny, from Bracknell in Berkshire, died the next day and Logan was originally charged with murder but the prosecution later accepted a guilty plea to manslaughter and in October 1998 at Lewes Crown Court he was sentenced to two years in a young offenders institution.

Oliver Gregan, 18, from Worthing, who pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm during the same incident, is due to be sentenced on March 27.

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