A hammer attacker who traded on his family's terror name was jailed for six years yesterday.

Mick McQuade, 47 - whose gunman brother Keith, 50, is serving life - battered Neil Honeyman, 27, for an alleged assault on his 15-year-old stepson.

McQuade told Mr Honeyman: "Remember the name. If we have to take a life to get anything we want, we will."

McQuade left Mr Honeyman with hammer imprints all over his back and head, and he also bit through his lip in the street attack, in Hemlington, Middlesbrough, said Sam Andrews, prosecuting.

McQuade was incensed when his partner's son returned home and said Mr Honeyman had headbutted him at the Rainbow Leisure Centre.

He turned up at the centre brandishing the hammer and pushing around furniture demanding to know where the boy's attacker was, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Staff at the centre were terrified by his behaviour.

McQuade was then driven by his partner to Mr Honeyman's house, where he saw him in the street.

He attacked him with the hammer. Mr Honeyman tried to run away but tripped and lay helpless.

McQuade left about a dozen circular hammer marks on his back and struck him at least twice on the head, with other blows to his arms and elbows.

The judge said that Mr Honeyman was paralysed by fear as McQuade bit deep into his lip, telling him to remember the name McQuade.

Mr Honeyman later paid several visits to McQuade's home, which the judge believed were attempts to pacify him.

Giving evidence at his trial, McQuade alleged that Mr Honeyman's injuries were self-inflicted, that he had asked for money to drop the case, and that the police rigged evidence against him.

The judge, Recorder Bryan Cox, told him: "You believe that you were perfectly justified in what you did.

"The courts cannot sanction the modern culture of that thinking, and they have to send out a message into the community."

Jamie Hill, mitigating, said that McQuade, of The Meadows, Coulby Newham, Middlesbrough, wanted to assure Mr Honeyman that he did not pose any future threat to him.

He said that McQuade had been on medication for 12 years for depression and he perhaps reacted differently to other people at the news of the alleged attack on his stepson.

He was jailed for six years after he was found guilty of affray and causing grievous bodily harm with intent, on March 24 last year.