A FIGHT in a nightclub turned nasty when an innocent bystander was suddenly smashed on the head by a bottle being brandished by a furious teenager just seconds earlier.
She was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" and had the bad luck to be walking by when the bottle cracked her on the head, Grimsby magistrates heard.
George Lee, 18, of Connaught Avenue, Grimsby, admitted assaulting Abbie Allen and using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour on November 18.
Brendan Woodward, prosecuting, said Miss Allen was an innocent bystander and was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" when she got caught up in a fight between Lee and another man in an upstairs bar at the Gypsy Tears nightclub, Cleethorpes, in the early hours.
She had been on the dance floor minutes earlier and was just walking past.
Lee swung a bottle and hit the other man in the face with it during a confrontation.
He swung the bottle at the man a second time but the bottle slipped out of his hand and hit Miss Allen on the head before bouncing off. It did not smash. Lee continued punching the other man. Miss Lee, a student, suffered a one-inch cut to her head, which needed to be glued in hospital, and needed two days off college because of headaches.
Nick Furman, mitigating, said Lee had not been looking for any trouble and claimed that the other man had repeatedly provoked him, both that night and on another occasion.
Lee tried to hit him as a pre-emptive strike. He had been drinking from the bottle and had no intention of using it as a weapon.
"The bottle slipped out of his hand, hit the young lady on the head and bounced off," said Mr Furman. "There was no malice directed to her at all."
Lee was given an 18-month conditional discharge and was ordered to pay £200 compensation, £85 costs and a Government-imposed £15 victims' surcharge.
