A man has received a suspended jail term for punching a traffic warden in the face after she fined his brother for using his mobile phone while driving.

Standing in the dock yesterday, Christian Mangion, 30, from Vittoriosa, admitted slightly injuring warden Luiga Borda, attacking a public official and breaching the peace at 10am on Tuesday in Floriana.

Police Inspector Godwin Scerri and defence lawyer Mark Vassallo spoke to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja at length at the bench before returning and Mr Mangion confirmed his guilty plea.

Inspector Scerri withdrew the charge of relapsing after learning that Mr Mangion’s last conviction was for breaching the peace, which is a contravention by law, so he could not be considered a relapser.

Mr Mangion was watching from the balcony of his girlfriend’s house as the warden stopped his brother and fined him for talking on his phone.

In anger he ran outside and – claiming she swore at him and told him to get away – assaulted Ms Borda.

Magistrate Bugeja noted in his judgment that incidents involving Mr Mangion seemed to be increasing in frequency and severity. He said he wanted to make it clear that resorting to violence instead of reasoning things out was “unacceptable to a civil society”.

The court wanted to send a message that this behaviour was not tolerated because wardens, police and every other public officer had the right to carry out their duties peacefully.

They should not have to face threats, name calling or worse, but the court still had to keep proportionality between what had happened and the punishment meted out.

He sentenced Mr Mangion to two years in jail, suspended for four years.