Gary Mills and Matthew Putson robbed Cyril Edmonds, 78, as he walked home from the White Rose pub in Longlands
View gallery Gallery: Attack victim Cyril Edmonds
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Two callous young robbers who attacked an elderly ex-soldier on the way home from the pub on Remembrance Day were locked up for a total of more than 12 years today.
Gary Mills, 22, and Matthew Putson, 17, came up to 78-year-old Cyril Edmonds as he walked back from the White Rose pub in Longlands.
One of them took his walking stick, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the floor, Teesside Crown Court heard today.
They rifled through his pockets and took his mobile phone, one of them he had a knife.
Prosecutor Ian West said: "As a parting shot, it seems utterly gratuitously, one of them struck him with his own walking stick on the face."
They left the victim helpless on the ground on Egmont Road, Middlesbrough.
Mr Edmonds had to shuffle to a nearby house to raise the alarm. He suffered injuries to his right cheek, hand and forearm.
His sight in his right eye worsened since the robbery, to the point where it had almost been lost.
Minutes after the robbery, Mills and Putson burgled a family home on nearby Lansdowne Road.
Mills was chased and caught by the householder while Putson was caught by police carrying Mr Edmonds' phone and a knuckle duster and lock knife weapon in his pocket.
Mills, of St Aidan's Drive, central Middlesbrough, and Putson, of St Aidan's Street, Gresham, Middlesbrough, both admitted robbery, burglary and having an offensive weapon.
Judge Michael Taylor jailed Mills for seven years and nine months and sentenced Putson to four years' detention.
A man in the public gallery clapped and said "well done judge" as the two went taken from the dock.
At the Gazette's request, the judge lifted reporting restrictions which, until today, had prevented the media from naming 17-year-old Putson.
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