A SENIOR judge has warned that people who take weapons out onto the street to use in late night violence will be jailed.

Judge Rhys Rowlands, the senior North Wales Circuit Judge, was speaking as he jailed a man who had drunk ten pints and after an altercation went home in the early hours to get a baseball bat.

Defendant Connor Heeley, 24, of Bodfor Street in Rhyl, put the bat down his trousers and returned to Water Street where CCTV footage played to the court showed him swinging it.

He struck one man and an entirely innocent young woman who was knocked to the ground and hit her head.

When he was disarmed he was seen to take up a boxer's fighting stance.

And when police were dealing with another man he ran up and punched out at him, explained prosecuting barrister Ryan Rothwell.

Heeley - who had been out the previous day watching the rugby - admitted an affray charge and possessing the baseball bat as an offensive weapon on February 24 and was jailed for ten months.

Judge Rhys Rowlands said that he had been asked to take an exceptional course and suspend the sentence. But he said that was not possible.

"You deliberately took a weapon out into the street late at night and used it.

"It is just the sort of behaviour that causes concern to the residents of Rhyl and beyond," he said.

"It is the sort of behaviour that must stop. People need to know that if you take weapons out on to the street at night, then you go to prison.

"In this case it is quite inevitable."

Judge Rowlands said that he took into account his guilty pleas and the fact that no injuries were caused as a result of the use of the bat.

He also said that police officers dealt with the incident "with remarkable restraint" and said that the case had been dealt with expedience.

Defending barrister Simon Rogers said that it was conceded that the case had aggravating features.

It was night-time violence in a public place with a weapon which was intentionally taken to the scene to seek a confrontation.

His client could not explain his actions other than a loss of temper by him.

Mr Rogers said that his client's decision-making was impaired by alcohol that he had consumed throughout the previous day.

He was genuinely concerned about his behaviour and was motivated, and was suitable, for probation service intervention.

Accommodation had been a problem for him for some three or four years.

But he now had the stability of a joint tenancy with his brother, who had tried to persuade him not to go out with the weapon that night.

The pre-sentence report showed that he was impressionable and vulnerable who suffered from dyslexia and other conditions and Mr Rogers suggested rehabilitation under a suspended prison sentence.

The court heard how Heeley had a previous conviction for robbery back in 2014 when he was aged 16 and a threatening behaviour conviction when he was aged 17.

That night he struggled on his arrest and had to be taken to the floor.

The woman who had been knocked over during the incident continued to lie on the floor and she later told police how she was in pain after hitting her head and ribs.

She was shocked, could not believe what had happened and for a period of time could not bend and look after her child properly.

It had left her anxious and she did not feel that she could go out to socialise in Rhyl again.