A scaffolder landed a punch in a bookies’ which changed his former friend’s life with a brain bleed and a fractured skull.
Richard Hutchinson, 40, attacked the victim without warning after the pair fell out over a debt, Teesside Crown Court heard.
CCTV footage showed 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”, said prosecutor Emma Atkinson today.
He did not remember the attack in the Stockton betting shop on September 6 last year.
He 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.
He told how the attack drastically altered his life personally and financially, in a statement read out in court.
He said he suffered headaches, tiredness and memory loss and he could not work, leading to stress, frustration and pressure on his family.
He said: “I’ve been told by my wife that it’s like living with a different person after the assault.
“That frustrates and upsets me that I’m not the husband or father I used to be.”
A neurosurgeon said he suffered severe traumatic brain injury, made good progress but needed follow-up assessments.
Hutchinson, of Grenville Road, Thornaby, went to police saying: “I’ve hit someone. I may have seriously hurt them.”
He 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”.
The judge, Recorder Andrew Dallas, said he made no judgment about the background between the former friends, with allegations not reported to the police.
He told Hutchinson: “All I would say is that there clearly has been trouble in the past between the two of you.”
He said it looked like Hutchinson “simply decided to take the law into your own hands”, attacking without warning, with premeditation and giving no chance for self-defence.
“You were clearly very angry, for whatever reason to do with this trouble,” the judge said.
“You just ran in and laid him out with one punch.
“This was not a chance confrontation or a confrontation he had engineered.
“You’d gone after him, found him and punched him to the ground using a significant degree of force, using surprise as one of your weapons.
“As can and so often does happen, his life has been changed forever in all probability.”
He accepted the defendant did not intend the devastating injury and showed remorse, jailing him for two years.
Hutchinson was given a five-year restraining order banning him from contacting the victim or going to his street
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