A Jekyll and Hyde attacker, formerly of Wellington, has been jailed after he bit and battered two victims and caused havoc in a pub.

Jack Reid drank a bottle of gin on his own before launching the first of his attacks in which he set upon a Good Samaritan who was trying to help him.

He gouged his eyes and left him with two broken front teeth, a broken cheekbone and a bite mark on his arm.

Reid went on to attack his on-off girlfriend in Tiverton five months later during a jealous rage. He pulled out lumps of her hair, partially strangled her, punched her in the face and bit her cheek and foot.

He scalded her by throwing a mug of freshly brewed tea over her legs and threatened to pour the contents of a boiling kettle over her.

She wrote a victim statement which said Reid could be pleasant when he was sober but when he was drunk, he was ‘a danger to himself and anyone around him’.

Reid, 26, formerly of Tiverton, Ilton, Wellington and Taunton, but now of no fixed abode, admitted two counts of causing actual bodily harm, two of criminal damage, and one of threatening behaviour.

He was jailed for a total of three years by Recorder Mr Malcolm Galloway at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: “When you are drunk, you are simply a violent bully who causes harm to those around you. If you continue to drink and offend, the sentences will get longer and longer.

“The woman who was the victim of the last offence said it was a terrifying ordeal and a sustained attack. She has shown a certain amount of forgiveness and reflected on what kind of Jekyll and Hyde character you are.”

Mr Herc Ashworth, prosecuting, said the first two offences occurred in Taunton, starting with him threatening staff at the Black Horse pub in Bridge Street on September 19. 

He became abusive when refused a drink, tried to get behind the bar and slammed a bar stool on the floor as he left.

The next attack was at a house where he was staying in Darwin Close, Taunton, in November last year, where he had a fit after downing an entire bottle of gin.

He started punching and biting a friend of the owners who tried to help him up and went on to gouge his eyes, causing blurred vision that prevented the victim working as a trucker for 11 weeks. 

He lost his two front teeth and a cut on the lip which was so unsightly that he felt self-conscious about going out in public.

Reid started a relationship with a woman in Tiverton shortly afterwards but it was tempestuous and he had been served with a Domestic Violence Protection Order two months before he went to her house on April 18 this year.

He accused her of seeing another man and punched her, pulled out a clump of her hair and strangled her to the point where she feared for her life.

He broke off the attack but then threw a water bottle at her, which missed, and then bit her cheek as she tried to push him off, going on to bite her foot.

He broke her phone and when she went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea to calm him down, he threw it over her. He threatened to throw boiling water from the kettle over her but slopped it on the floor instead.

Patrick Mason, defending, said Reid has mental health issues arising from a difficult childhood in which he witnessed domestic violence.

He developed a drink problem and suffered a decline in his mental health at the time of these offences. He had stayed out of trouble for more than a year after the fracas in the pub in Taunton.