Jose Balelo (25) and Joao Silva (33) were sentenced at the Magistrate’s Court.
Assistant legal adviser Sophie Lister, prosecuting, played the court CCTV footage of the assault, which took place in the early hours of 26 July last year, showing the men leaving the teenager, who was under the age of 18, lying on the ground in Queen Street.
She said words had been exchanged between the victim and the two men, who had been drinking at the Royal Yacht. After the assault they followed the teenager and chased him up the street.
Ms Lister added that ‘this was an assault of serious violence on the streets of St Helier’, the defendants were both adults assaulting a child, and that the incident involved kicking and punching, which carried the ‘risk of serious injury’.
The teenager was left with a minor graze to his knee but was given the all clear by staff at the Emergency Department. The court was told he did not want to make a formal complaint.
Advocate James Bell, who represented Silva, said his client was ‘ashamed’ of his actions, which were ‘out of character’, and he wanted to apologise.
Advocate Bell said there was also a ‘degree of provocation from the young man’ but added that Silva accepted ‘he should not have behaved in the way that he did’.
Balelo, who represented himself, said: ‘I feel guilty for all my actions on that day.’
Relief Magistrate David Le Cornu imposed a 120-hour community-service order on the men, who ‘both came very close to receiving a custodial sentence’.
He also placed them on probation for nine months.
