An alleged bikie has been spared jail over an Anzac Day affray at a Coalfields pub, when he threw a bar stool and punched a man in the head in what a magistrate has described as an "extremely serious" case.
Jared James Marko, 33, was handed a 10-month intensive correction order when he faced Cessnock Local Court on Wednesday, after he pleaded guilty to affray the morning he was set to contest the allegations in a hearing last month.
At the time he was arrested, police said Marko was allegedly a member of the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang.
The court heard that the Weston man was drunk when he arrived at the Criterion Hotel in Cessnock just after 5.30pm on April 25, when several "associates" physically tried to stop him from entering the pub.
Marko pushed one man onto the concrete and made his way inside the venue, where he knocked another man off a bar stool and hurled the seat over the bar before he was eventually taken back outside.
He then took off his shirt, threw a man to the ground and punched another in the head.
The incident was captured on CCTV cameras.
The court heard that Marko was grieving the death of a close family member at the time incident.
He was deemed unsuitable for community service work because of ongoing cancer treatment he was receiving.
Magistrate Ian Rodgers said Marko was insistent in his behaviour amid "various attempts to contain him" - it was not an isolated, single act of violence.
But Magistrate Rodgers said the best outcome was for Marko to be given an intensive correction order - viewed as a custodial sentence served in the community, supervised by Community Corrections.
"It's clearly an extremely serious offence," he said.
