A teenage thug was today starting a nine-year sentence behind bars after taking terrible revenge on a Black Country publican.

Djavon Williams repeatedly smashed Amandeep Shanker over the head with a recently sharpened hoe.

The attack came after evidence against his aunt had been given to the police by the victim and wrecked the life of the 33-year-old and fundamentally changed his character, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told yesterday.

Mr Shanker was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

He received a depressed skull fracture in the attack and later suffered a seizure. He now has to take anti-epileptic drugs, said pro-secutor Mrs Kanwal Juss.

He was targeted after giving police a witness statement when a 74-year-old woman customer was hit with a handbag in one of the two licensed premises he runs, the Victoria Suite and the Victoria Palace, both in Smethwick. It implicated a relative of Williams.

Eight weeks later the 19-year-old thug tracked him down to the second of these in Pope Street where he was tidying the garden last June.

Williams knocked him to the ground with a blow to the head from a torch he had been carrying and continued the onslaught with the hoe Mr Shanker had been using.

The attacker fled after hitting the helpless victim twice on the skull with the implement but was tracked down around a month later.

Mr Shanker said in a victim impact statement read out: “I used to love getting up in the morning. But my life will never be the same again.”

Williams from Soho Close, Smethwick, who was convicted of wounding with intent and intimidating a witness at an earlier trial, had previous convictions for possession of a Samurai sword and a gun. Miss Blondelle Thompson, defen-ding, said: “He is a very foolish young man.”

Mr Shanker said after the case: “All I did was my public duty in helping the police after a nice woman was hit with a handbag.”

The case involving the handbag attack on the 74-year old was discontinued after she died for unrelated reasons.