A youth cleared of the murder of Tekle Mallory outside the Paget Ice Queen was convicted yesterday of assaulting a female Police officer two years later at the same location.

Everett Jahni Bean was given a three month sentence suspended for one year for biting WPc Shakisha Minors and pulling some skin off her finger outside the restaurant in the early hours of August 10 this year.

In January this year, Assistant Justice Archibald Warner instructed a Supreme Court jury to find Bean not guilty of the murder of Mr. Mallory outside Ice Queen in July 2001.

Crown counsel Graveney Bannister yesterday called for Bean to be jailed as a deterrent for others because he had no respect for authority figures.

He said Bean, of Jones Lane, Warwick, was convicted of assaulting a prison officer in June of this year and received two weeks in jail.

Magistrates Court heard yesterday that another man taunted 21-year-old Bean in the parking lot outside Ice Queen this August, telling he him had "got away with murder".

Bean said he got angry and refused to calm down and was cursing the other man.

He was told by two male officers to leave the scene, but he refused unless he was given a letter by Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith.

WPc Minors put Bean in handcuffs and took him into a car, but inside as she tried to search him, he bit her on the shoulder.

Bean, who denied using offensive words and assaulting a Police officer, also squeezed the officer's hand as she tried to take his cell phone from him, scraping some skin from her thumb.

After he was convicted yesterday, Bean apologised to Magistrate Edward King and WPc Minors, and asked the court for leniency.

He said outside Ice Queen was a "hostile environment".

Sentencing Bean, Mr. King told him was a young man "who needs serious guidance and counselling to save him from ruin".

His sentence needed to be a deterrent, but it should also "give you the opportunity to change your ways to avoid everlasting damnation.

"Your family and friends need to seriously sit you down and talk to you and get you some good guidance."

In the Mallory trial in January, Bean's co-accused, Quincy Stanley (Jimbo) Brangman was found not guilty of murder but jailed for eight years for wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon.

The prosecution had argued Bean held Mr. Mallory while Brangman stabbed him, though the defence argued Bean was trying to pull the victim away from the fight.