A THUG who sparked a pub brawl when he threw barstools and cut a man’s face with a breadknife has been jailed for two and a half years.

Ervis Kola, 21, was with his girlfriend at the Jolly Postboys in Florence Park, Cowley, oxford, when he drunkenly demanded change at the bar.

Hugh Williams, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court that Kola then picked up a glass, threw it at the landlord, and shouted abuse, before smashing a window with a bar stool.

After throwing another barstool at a customer, Kola, of Lytton Road, Cowley, went home and fetched a serrated breadknife and a kitchen knife before returning to the pub.

Outside, he waved the breadknife around and caught William Hughes in the face, leaving the 40-year-old with superficial injuries.

Kola was convicted by a jury earlier this year of affray, unlawful wounding and having a bladed article.

Lucy Tapper, defending, said the father-of-one had left his family in Kosovo to seek asylum in Britain in 2001, had been left effectively blind in one eye, had part of one ear missing and had scars on his head from violence suffered at the hands of the Serbian army.

A psychiatric report stated Kola, who has previous convictions for public order offences, battery, assaulting police officers, common assault and affray, had “symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder”.

Jailing him, Judge Patrick Eccles said: “Your conduct was an over-reaction in the way you showed how much you had lost your temper.”

The court heard deportation papers were served on Kola in July but he intends to contest the decision.