A TEENAGE thug who shouted racist abuse at a Worcester warehouseman before knocking him off his bike has been locked up for three years.

Sam Brown ran at Pervez Iqbal as he rode home from a mail order company and headbutted him.

The victim tried to flee but Brown chased him near Bull Ring island, in St John's, pushed him off the bike and kicked him as he lay in the road, said Gareth Walters, prosecuting.

When an ambulance arrived, Brown yelled at paramedics and threatened to "rape" the mother of a police officer trying to arrest him, Worcester Crown Court heard.

Mr Iqbal was very upset by the incident - at 9pm on Tuesday, August 26, last year - he had suffered sleep loss and was coping with the effect on his 12-year-old son.

The 18-year-old also attacked 64-year-old Anthony Baker in Liverpool Road, Ronkswood, after he heard noises outside his home on Saturday, October 19, last year and confronted the youth over damage to his van.

Brown dropped his trousers and knocked Mr Baker to the ground.

A flurry of blows put Mr Baker in hospital for two days and broke his dentures, Mr Walters said.

Brown also stole goods worth £110 from a car in St Albans Close, Worcester, and tried to break into another in Redfern Avenue but left his fingerprints on a door.

Earlier this year, a jury convicted Brown of assaulting Mr Baker and causing actual bodily harm.

Francis Laird, defending, claimed Brown had mistakenly thought Mr Iqbal had attacked his mother, and alleged that Mr Baker had lost his temper before a fight broke out.

"The defendant accepts he used an unpleasant phrase and that it was an unprovoked attack," he said. "This is the pattern of a young man who reacts very badly in difficult circumstances."

Brown, of Canterbury Road, Ronkswood, pleaded guilty to racially aggravated assault on Mr Iqbal, theft from a car, interference with another vehicle and failing to surrender to bail.

Sentencing him to three years detention, Judge Andrew Geddes said he had used an insulting word against Mr Iqbal and then launched into an unprovoked attack.

"It's difficult to know what has got into your mind to start offending in this manner," he told Brown, who had 13 previous convictions including wounding and affray.