A young woman who glassed a father in a nightclub after he objected to her spraying drink over him has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years youth custody.

Lauren Bigsby lashed out with the heavy glass she was holding and smashed it above Marc Padgham's left eye.

She then fled from the Beluga Bar in Tunbridge Wells and it took police nearly two months to track her down through an appeal in the media.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Mr Padgham and his wife Kim had been out to dinner before going to the High Street bar on November 29 last year.

There was a slight confrontation with 20-year-old Bigsby's boyfriend before the couple went onto the dance floor.

The father-of-three told how he and his wife felt liquid sprayed over them. They turned to see Bigsby standing at the bar with a straw in her mouth.

When he asked her why she had done it, she swore at him. After further requests for an explanation, she pushed the glass in his face.

"I had glass embedded in my face," said Mr Padgham. "I was left with a scar. There was no injury to the actual eye. I was lucky, I suppose."

Bigsby, of Sherwood Way, Tunbridge Wells, denied wounding with intent, claiming she acted in self-defence, but was convicted.

Recorder Jeremy Gold QC told Bigsby: "It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to have to sentence a 20-year-old lass like you to a term of custody, but that is my inevitable duty in the light of the offence of which you have been convicted."

"It could easily have been worse," he said. "You could have put his eye out and blinded him in one eye. It is lucky for him and you it didn't."