A man left his neighbour blind in one eye after viciously attacking him with a martial arts weapon, a court heard.

Sebastian Sumner lashed out at cancer-sufferer Steven Tanton with rice flails following a long-running dispute.

Now, 30-year-old Sumner could be locked up indefinitely under a sentence for public protection. Maidstone Crown Court heard that he and Mr Tanton, 51, lived in separate flats in a two-storey house in Gillingham Road, Gillingham.

Anne Phillips, prosecuting, said there was a history of problems between them when Sumner went to the victim’s home on May 23.

Mr Tanton was on the telephone to police reporting the latest row when Sumner ran up to him and hit him in the face with the flails.

He struck him on the left side of the face around his eye. Mr Tanton was taken to Medway Maritime Hospital and treated for a deep cut to his face and scalp and bruising.

He could not see out of the eye. He was referred to an ophthalmic surgeon at a London hospital.

“It would appear he has now lost all but total vision in his left eye,” said Mrs Phillips.

Sumner, a carpenter, had been bailed to an address in Meadside Walk, Walderslade, with a condition not to go to Gillingham, but Judge Martin Joy remanded him in custody pending sentence in six weeks.

John Donnelly, defending, said during a plea for bail that Sumner, who admitted wounding with intent, had a history of “anxiety and conflict”. But the judge said: “There can be nothing other than a substantial period of imprisonment.

“The reality is a very serious permanent injury has been caused,” he said. “It seems to me this was an utterly wicked thing to do.”