Good Samaritan suffers multiple fractures after smashed in face by cricket bat
A Good Samaritan suffered multiple jaw fractures when smashed in the face by a cricket bat, a judge was told.
Tony Kufandirori was attacked from behind by Jonathan Walsh after going to the aid of a friend who was being beaten up, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Walsh, of Large Avenue, Darlaston, was locked up for 18 months.
The court heard how trouble flared in a car park behind a social club in Darlaston Road, Walsall, in the early hours of June 7 last year.
Mr Mark Phillips, prosecuting, said: "He was leaving the club with friends when he saw somebody he knew taking a beating from a group of men.
"He went to ask if the person was OK and the man told him not to get involved, so he went back towards the group he had been walking with."
Mr Kufandirori later told police: "As I turned I was hit hard on the left side of the jaw from behind and fell to the ground. I was hit a second time as I tried to get up."
His friends then rushed over to help him, the court was told.
Mr Phillips said that the victim noticed that the attacker had something in his hand and a witness later told police it had looked like a cricket bat.
Mr Kufandirori had been to school with 20-year-old Walsh and the pair had said hello when they saw each other earlier in the evening, continued the prosecutor.
His jaw was broken in several places and surgery was needed to repair the damage which still required treatment six months later, concluded Mr Phillips.
Mr Stephen Cadwaladr, defending, said Walsh had drunk so much he remembered little of what had happened.
The lawyer continued: "It was a cricket-bat type weapon that he had picked up at some stage. This was not a premeditated attack and he bitterly regrets it. The injury was bad."
Walsh admitted causing grievous bodily harm and was ordered to be detained in a Young Offenders Institution for 16 months by Recorder Anthony Lowe.
Recorder Lower told him: "You were under the influence of alcohol and possibly drugs when you did this and there is no suggestion of an on going feud. You are not a bad person but on June 8 you did a bad thing."
