A THUG who fled to Costa Rica to evade justice for biting two men and nearly blinding a third is today starting a 40-month sentence in a British jail.

Ashley Fulcher, 25, was on parole from an earlier prison sentence for violence when he attacked the three victims in two separate incidents in Selby pubs, Reginald Bosomworth told York Crown Court in prosecution.

On March 9, 2014, he bit one man's finger and second man's arm when they tried to stop him snatching a woman's vodka and coke in New Inn, Selby, and on April 12, 2015, without warning, he hit a third man in the face with a bottle in Londesborough Arms, Selby, cutting him above and below his eye.

"Had the glass smashed or had the impact been (on the eye) there would have been a serious threat to the victim's eye and eyesight," said the barrister.

The Parole Board ordered Fulcher back to prison to serve the remainder of the 40-month sentence he received at Norwich Crown Court for kicking a 33-year-old man in the head and stamping on him in Great Yarmouth in 2012, but he fled to Costa Rica and was on the run for a year until he was arrested at Heathrow Airport when he returned to the UK.

His solicitor advocate Neal Kutte said he chose Costa Rica because he knew it would be difficult to extradite him from there and had been "encouraged and supported by others".

Fulcher, of Hawthorne Terrace, Selby, pleaded guilty to wounding the Londesborough Arms victim on the basis that he didn't realise he had a bottle in his hand at the time, causing actual bodily harm to the two men in New Inn, absconding by not reporting as ordered to prison by the Parole Board and failure to attend court. He was jailed for 40 months. He has previous convictions for arson, battery, racially aggravated insults and wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm in Great Yarmouth.

Mr Kutte said he generally kept out of trouble, didn't drink and worked hard. But when he did drink, he drank too much and committed offences. Mr Bosomworth said Fulcher was released from prison on May 23, 2013.

Late on March 9, 2014, he was behaving in a drunken loud manner at New Inn, when he took a man's coat. The coat was returned and the landlord told him he wouldn't be served any more alcohol.

He tried to take the drink of a woman at the bar, whose two companions tried to restrain him. So he bit them. He was eventually restrained when a doorman of a nearby pub helped them and the landlord.

On September 22, 2014, Judge Jim Spencer QC gave him a chance by deferring sentence for the New Inn offences for six months so he could show that he could lead a law-abiding life.

But in April 2015, he lashed out in the Londesborough Arms.

After he failed to return to prison in May 2015, police started a nationwide hunt for him.