A GWENT teenager faces his third custodial sentence in 15 months after being found guilty of breaching an anti-social behaviour order.

Alex Crowley, from Cwmbran, breached his three-year ASBO by throwing rusty screws and batteries into his neighbour's pond last November.

Magistrates at Blackwood warned the 16-year-old from Marl Court, Thornhill, that he faces custody later this month following the preparation of a pre-sentence report.

Crowley, who denied breaching his ASBO, was sentenced to six months in youth detention in January 2004 after being convicted of wounding fisherman Roy Harper.

The 31-year-old dad needed 35 stitches to the three-inch cut across his face after being attacked by Crowley and other youths on the canal bank in Cwmbran.

Mr Harper had severe nerve damage, his face was left permanently numb and he could only close one eye properly.

In May 2004 Crowley was sentenced to another four months in custody after being found guilty of violent disorder.

At the same hearing he was made subject to a three-year post-conviction ASBO. Crowley's neighbour, Julianne Rich, told the court she was watching television with her daughter on the morning of November 27 when she heard a noise from her back garden.

Mrs Rich said: "I went upstairs to see if I could see anything. I looked out of the window and I saw Alex Crowley in the window and his hand was up and he was throwing something into the pond."

She added: "I was very angry. This pond was built out of money my mother had left to my two daughters and we had just spent £800 on lining it and stocking it with fish."

Mrs Rich found seven items in the pond such as candles, batteries and rusty screws that were not there when she fed the fish earlier that day. Robert Wayne, defending, had called Crowley's friends to the stand - one of whom admitted responsibility for throwing items into the pond.

He added: "This is a situation where Mrs Rich put two and two together and got five.

"There is simply no truth in the allegations that his friends came here to lie."

Following the verdict, PC Darrell Dewar, crime and disorder reduction officer for Cwmbran police station, said: "I'm sure the community will be pleased with this conviction because it shows the ASBO process is working."