A PENSIONER who broke a woman’s cheekbone with a marble kitchen implement has been spared jail, because of his age.

Cleophus Ward used the hefty mortar, used with a pestle to grind spices, to hit a care worker who had been living with him at his Gorse Hill home.

Ward hit Juliet Banda on the back of the head, then repeatedly to the face after a minor row.

But after reading about the pensioner’s ill health, a judge at Swindon Crown Court gave him a conditional discharge.

Passing sentence Judge John McNaught said “If you had been a younger man I would have been thinking of a prison sentence because this woman had nasty injuries from this pestle and mortar that I have been shown.

“That, in my view, deserves a prison sentence.

“But you are 76 years old and unfortunate enough to be in ill health. I have read the doctor’s report on you this morning and it makes sad reading.”

Care worker Miss Banda was living at Ward’s Norman Road home when the attack happened last February.

David Maunder, prosecuting, said the victim met the defendant soon after coming to the country from Zimbabwe about eight years ago.

Mr Maunder said she got home from a night shift on the morning of Sunday, February 24, and went to have a bath.

In order to do so she had to get boiling water from downstairs and as she filled the tub Ward was washing his face.

When she put a towel down she dropped the toilet seat which annoyed Ward.

After her bath she went downstairs in a towel to make a cup of tea and felt a heavy blow to the back of her head.

He said she turned and saw Ward with the mortar landing second and third blows to her face.

She was bleeding heavily and pushed him away, causing him to fall to the floor, and then called herself an ambulance.

The police arrived soon after and Ward was arrested in his car and found to have two knives.

Ward, of Norman Road, pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm. He denied two counts of having a bladed article and those counts were dropped.

The court heard he admitted the assault on the basis the victim grabbed him, which the Crown did not accept but would not challenge.

Ward was also ordered by the judge to pay Miss Banda £750 compensation.