Paranoid drug gang man attacked security guards at Sheffield's 'Morgz Fest'

Emirja Duraku was seen emerging from bushes, smelling heavily of cannabis, and began banging two lumps of concrete together on the morning of the "Morgz Fest," at Don Valley Bowl.

"This is what you're going to get," he told a security guard, before walking away, at 9.30am, on August 31, last year, prosecutor Carl Fitch told Sheffield Crown Court on Friday.

When another guard tried to radio colleagues, Duraku attempted to seize the radio and grab the man around the throat.

He punched him three to five times to the face and head, knocking his victim to the ground where he hit him five more times, leaving the man with swelling, cuts and bruises.

Duraku was chased to an area near the canal where he grabbed a four-foot-long plank, that had nails sticking from the end, and hit another guard over the head with the nails pointing down.

The guard was left with two deep gashes that required 14 stitches.

"He told police he had come from a place where cannabis was being grown," Mr Fitch said. "Because of a dispute with his boss he thought he was being followed.

"He had been unable to sleep for two days because he had moved from town to town."

He thought the guards were radioing to his enemies, the court heard.

Andrew Swabey, mitigating, said Duraku arrived in the UK from Albania by lorry and was "indebted to some individuals who were involved in criminal activities."

"He wanted to put that behind him," he said. "He left. He had nowhere to go. He arrived in Sheffield.

"He was having delusional thoughts. He was paranoid and not in the right frame of mind."

Duraku, 21, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to affray, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm.

Recorder Amy Mannion told him these were "completely and utterly unprovoked attacks," and jailed him for 28 months. He will be deported on his release.