A GWENT man who permanently blinded an elderly pub-goer in one eye with a punch was yesterday warned he faces prison.

Jonathan Tuvnes, (pictured) aged 35, of David Close, Pill, Newport, was convicted at Newport crown court yesterday of causing grievous bodily harm to 60-year-old William Mathias.

Sentencing was adjourned, but Judge David Morris told Tuvnes who pleaded not guilty: "There is only one apparent sentence for this offence - immediate imprisonment. The only relevant question is for how long it should be.

"You are a potential danger to ordinary, law-abiding citizens. "It was a gratuitous and brutal blow to the eye of a much smaller and older man than yourself."

The court had heard how Tuvnes, 5ft 10in tall and weighing 18 stone, attacked Mr Mathias at the Irish National Club, Pill, on November 2 last year.

Eugene Egan, prosecuting, said the punch broke Mr Mathias' spectacles and a glass lens cut his right eye. He has lost 99 per cent of his vision in that eye because of the injury.

Mr Egan said Mr Mathias had approached Tuvnes in the pub after he threw a bottle across the dance floor.

Tuvnes later launched "an unprovoked, cowardly and vicious attack on a harmless old man who was minding his own business and who only had the gall to say to him, 'Please don't be offensive'," Mr Egan said.

Tuvnes, who did not give evidence, had told police he could not remember anything because he was drunk.

The court heard he was already subject to a combination order - two years probation and 100 hours community service - having been convicted of violent disorder, also in Commercial Road, Pill, in October 2000.

He will be re-sentenced for that offence for breaching the order. Mr Egan said Tuvnes had been in and out of court since the age of 14 when he was convicted of two burglaries and a theft.

He was first convicted of violent crime, two counts of actual bodily harm, at the age of 20. When he was 30, Tuvnes was jailed for three months for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on a pub landlord in Cwmbran.

And at the age of 32, he assaulted a police constable in Commercial Road, Pill, and was fined.

Tuvnes was denied bail while awaiting sentence.