A FORMER soldier stabbed a teenager 12 times outside an Oxford bar as more than 20 youths with weapons clashed.

Mahesh Bennett was “protecting a mate as he would do in the theatre of war” as he plunged scissors into his 16-year-old victim’s chest a dozen times outside Baby Love, in King Edward Street, at 4am.

The 25-year-old former member of the Royal Logistic Corps was part of a melee involving “at least 20 different people” armed with a bottle, a metal pole, and a masonry block.

Bennett was jailed for 26 months at Oxford Crown Court yesterday having earlier admitted unlawful wounding and a separate offence of affray in which he brandished a knife at his ex-girlfriend’s house in Blackbird Leys.

Initially trouble started both inside and outside the venue in the early hours of October 31, prosecutor Clare Tucker said.

She added: “(The victim) said he was standing outside and as he was standing there he saw a fight in front of him.

“He saw some people approach them and one of the men grabbed his friend and another approached him in an aggressive way.

“He (the 16-year-old) punched the male as he thought he was going to attack him.

“The next thing he remembers is walking in the road feeling very strange. He looked down and could see blood.”

Miss Tucker said the teenager “rang his mother and said ‘you need to get to hospital as I’m going to die’”. The boy’s injuries were not life-threatening.

Michael Edmonds, defending, said upwards of 20 people were involved in public violence and added: “When large numbers of young men, under the influence of alcohol, leave licensed premises it’s a perennial and depressing problem.”

Bennett, of Mora Street, Clerkenwell, in London, came to England aged 12 after his father was murdered in Jamaica. He served as a truck driver in the Army for four years.

He has three previous convictions for battery related to domestic violence.

Mr Edmonds said Bennett’s friend, Andrew Pantry, who had served with him in Army, was the victim of the bottling.

He said: “The mentality that one develops in the Army, the idea of protecting your mates come what may, is of course an essential characteristic for those serving in the theatre of war.

“It is of course entirely inappropriate outside a pub in Oxford.”