A THUG has been jailed after attacking another man with a hammer and carrying a knife on a bus across Ayrshire. 

Dylan Brannigan, 20, was sentenced after pleading guilty to two offences at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court.

The court heard that that Brannigan was involved in an altercation in the grounds of St Margaret's Church in Dalry on December 16 last year.

He assaulted a man by punching him on the head and body, causing him to fall to the ground. 

He also repeatedly struck him on the head with a glass bottle, causing the bottle to smash, and repeatedly attempted to strike him on the head with a hammer or a similar object.

The victim of the attack, who was with a woman at the time, suffered lacerations to his head and a cut above his eye. 

The incident was captured on public space CCTV, which was shown to the court and the sheriff.

Brannigan, of Burnhouse Avenue in Dalry, also admitted being in possession of a knife in Irvine High Street on September 20. 

The court was told he had got on a bus at Kilmarnock bus station, before pulling a knife from an ASDA carrier bag. 

Police were called and officers boarded the bus at Irvine.

Brannigan ran off but was stopped and searched after a short foot chase, with officers recovering the knife.

During sentencing on Friday, April 12, his lawyer told the court that Brannigan had only shown the knife to another passenger on the bus, and had not brandished it. 

He added: "It must have been pretty scary for them. It was a knife designed for aggression."

The lawyer told Sheriff Murdoch Mactaggart that his client enjoyed undertaking unpaid work, which "gave him something to get up for in the morning". 

However, Sheriff Mactaggart told Brannigan that there was "no alternative to a custodial sentence". 

He was given a 16-month sentence, to be served in a young offenders' institution. 

Brannigan was admonished on a separate charge of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner at his home in Dalry in February this year.