A MAN who was spared jail after he was caught on CCTV kicking a stranger in the head during a drunken attack has fled to Poland.

Karol Lyson was put on a suspended sentence in February and told to complete 10 days of rehabilitation activity requirement.

But the 28-year-old pylon painter has informed the probation service that he has gone home and does not intend to return to the UK.

Now a judge has issued a warrant for his arrest so he can be detained and brought before the court should he come back.

Andrew Stone, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that as far as they knew Lyson, formerly of Whitehead Street, was still in Eastern Europe.

Judge Tim Mousley QC said: "I have read the report. He has been in touch with the probation service only to tell them he is out of the jurisdiction, via Stockton on Tees.

"Obviously there has to be a warrant not backed for bail, should he return to the jurisdiction.

"If I order that there be a warrant not backed for bail that should be flagged up at immigration."

Lyson launched the violent attack on a man who was on a night out in Swindon town centre while working at the former air base in Lyneham.

The victim and a mate were close to the fountain in the town centre when they were asking direction to a nightclub in the early hours of Saturday November 7.

One of the men sat down with his back to a shop window to roll a cigarette and was kicked in the head.

Both had very little recollection of being knocked unconscious before waking up on the ground, each having suffered a broken nose, cuts and bruises and one lost a tooth.

Police received a report of the attack and tracked the attackers down to a van, where Lyson was sat in the vehicle with the engine running.

He was obstructive and difficult and had to be threatened with a taser before he got out of the vehicle and was arrested, refusing to give a sample of breath.

When he was questioned he accepted he punched one man and kicked another in the incident, but could not explain why.

The court was told Lyson had been in the UK for seven years and always worked, most recently as an electricity pylon painter.

He was put on a nine-month jail term suspended for two years and banned from the road for six months.