A HOMELESS man has been banned from returning to his family home after attacking his stepfather during an argument.

David Rees pushed over Terry Sharp before fighting off two police who were called to remove him from the house in Okehampton, Exeter Crown Court heard.

He had been living with his mother and stepfather for seven months after becoming homeless but tensions grew to the point when he was ordered out.

He became violent during a final argument and then went upstairs, where he refused to budge even after the police had been called.

The struggle to arrest him was so violent that one of the officers accidentally caught the other with incapacitant spray.

Rees, aged 24, formerly of Northlew but now living rough in Okehampton, admitted assault by battery and two counts of resisting arrest.

He was ordered to do 20 days of rehabilitation activities as part of a 12- month community order by Judge Timothy Rose.

The judge also made a restraining order which bans him from contacting his mother Janice or stepfather Terry Sharp for a year or from going to their home.

He told him: ‘There needs to be a buffer zone here to get away from the immediate problem. What happened that day is that at some stage you lost control of yourself, pushing and shoving and causing all kinds of mayhem.

‘You might say you have bad relations with your stepfather and it is not your fault but we know how you behaved because of the way you reacted to the police.

‘You went half berserk. You put up a ridiculous fight and are fortunate not to have been charged with assaulting them.

‘You are 24 and it is time to realise you are an adult and try to go forward with that.

‘You need a sense of personal responsibility.’

Rachel Drake, prosecuting, there had been growing tension between Rees and his stepfather in the months leading up to the assault on August 8.

Mr Sharp made a victim impact statement in which he said Rees’s stay at the family home had put a strain on his marriage for forced him to move out for two weeks.

Mr Warren Robinson, defending, asked the judge to limit the duration of the restraining order in the hope that family relationships could be rebuilt. There was still a line of communication through Rees’s older brother.