A drunken reveller who attacked a couple outside a town centre nightclub with pepper spray before trying to resist arrest has avoided jail.

Thomas Culshaw, 21, was reported to the police after ‘running amok’ with the spray canister outside the Voodoo Lounge in Accrington and using it to attack Lucy Donohoe and her boyfriend Jordan Catterall.

Mr Catterall was left unable to see for a number of hours, and in ‘severe pain’. He underwent an eye test to make sure there was no permanent damage.

When officers arrived at the scene Culshaw started being threatening and abusive calling them ‘b******s’, Burnley Crown Court heard.

Culshaw, of First Avenue, Church, pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon, possessing cocaine, resisting arrest and two counts of assault

He was given a 26-week jail sentence suspended for 12 months with 150 hours unpaid work, a two-month curfew and ordered to pay £450 compensation and £200 costs.

Peter Barr, prosecuting, said the incident happened at around 3.15am on January 24 this year.

Culshaw said he was given the canister by a friend and ‘on a spur of the moment’ he ‘behaved very stupidly and totally out of character’.

In a victim impact statement Miss Donohoe said she has not been out in Accrington town centre since the incident and fears bumping into Culshaw.

She said: “Luckily the substance that was sprayed missed my eyes. I didn’t suffer any physical pain which was a huge relief after seeing my boyfriend’s discomfort and the pain he went through at the time and over the next few days.”

Mr Barr told the court how Culshaw was ‘kicking out’ at officers as they tried to arrest him and they later seized the canister and a wrap of cocaine.

When Culshaw was taken to a police station he was ‘too intoxicated’ to be interviewed.

Anthony Parkinson, defending, said it was ‘15 minutes of madness’ and he has shown contrition and is ‘appalled by his own behaviour’.

Recorder Simond Medland QC said it was ‘outrageous conduct’ and Culshaw had ‘behaved in a disgusting way towards the police’.

Sentencing, he said: “You have brought yourself, by your drunken outrageous conduct, to the very threshold of an immediate custodial sentence.”