A Pembroke man narrowly missed a jail sentence after admitting to hitting another man on the back of the head with a hammer.

Jahdel Aaron Rogers received a 12-month suspended prison sentence yesterday after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing at the Supreme Court to simple wounding.

The complainant, Andrew Lloyd Raynor, was working as a service technician for Bermuda Air Conditioning and went to Place's Place with his colleague, Vance Hollis, to fix a refrigerator.

He claimed he saw the 26-year old defendant, whom he knew had been a victim of a stabbing recently and said 'hello'. Mr. Raynor said after fixing the fridge, he walked out of the bar and felt a blow to the back of his head and saw the defendant with a hammer raised as if to hit him again.

He said Rogers chased him and said, "I'll f**k you up boy. I'll f**k you up".

The complainant went to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for treatment where he needed seven staples to a head wound, two CAT scans and had bleeding to the brain. One doctor found a fracture while the other only found a haematoma.

In a Police interview, Rogers claimed Mr. Raynor taunted him by smirking and making stabbing gestures when he walked into the bar. He said he had been confronted on several occasions by the complainant and his friends about the stabbing.

During yesterday's hearing, Crown counsel Robert Welling said an immediate custodial sentence of 12 to 18 months should be imposed.

Rogers' lawyer, Charles Richardson, argued that as a first time offender, he should get a suspended sentence. He explained his client is the main provider of his five-year-old daughter and accepted that hitting the victim was not acceptable.

Rogers said: "I would like to apologise to the victim and his family and to my family. I'm very apologetic. That's all I have to say."

Puisne Judge Carlise Greaves put Rogers on two years probation and ordered him to enroll in a substance abuse programme. He also put him on a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for the first six months and told him to maintain full employment.