This is the shocking moment a scaffolder’s savage punch left a former friend with a brain bleed and a fractured skull.
Richard Hutchinson attacked his victim without warning after the pair fell out over a debt.
CCTV footage has now been released which shows the engineer standing at the counter of William Hill bookmakers’ when Hutchinson ran in and felled him with one blow to the jaw.
The victim was knocked unconscious to the tiled floor by the “full force punch”, The Gazette reported this week.
He did not remember the attack in the Stockton betting shop on September 6 last year.
The man was taken to hospital with a skull fracture and a brain bleed.
He stayed in intensive care for 16 days but was later readmitted to hospital for another 11 days for rehabilitation, Teesside Crown Court heard.
Richard Hutchinson shown punching the man on CCTV
Hutchinson, of Grenville Road, Thornaby, went to police saying: “I’ve hit someone. I may have seriously hurt them.”
The 40-year-old said to officers he “lost it” because he and his wife had been threatened, he went to try to “sort it out” and thought he had just knocked him out.
He told police in interview: “I didn’t mean to cause that much damage to him. It shocked me how easily he went down.
“I’m gutted. I’m sick to my stomach that I’ve actually done that to him.
“I didn’t expect that at all. If anything, I expected him to turn around and hit me back.”
He later admitted causing grievous bodily harm. He had a caution for a similar offence in 2005 and assault convictions, but no violence for a decade.
Duncan McReddie, defending, said Hutchinson acted recklessly with “a degree of provocation that was long-running” after he borrowed £300 from the victim, down to £60 by the time of the assault.
He said the unemployed scaffolder expressed regret and remorse since the assault and a prison sentence would badly affect the dad’s family.
Both sides made allegations of threats and violence from each man against the other in the run-up to the attack in the bookies’.
The prosecution said Hutchinson threw punches at the victim the day before the attack then threatened to “fill him in” on the phone.
The defence claimed the the money was demanded from Hutchinson, his wife was assaulted, he was threatened with garden shears and heard he would be given “a good hiding”.
Hutchinson was jailed for two years and given a five-year restraining order banning him from contacting the victim or going to his street
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