A self-employed roofer has been sentenced after punching a man to the ground outside a Cardiff bar and then striking him again as he got up, leaving the victim unconscious and slumped against a wall.
Kyle Harris, 36, was at Sai La Vie on Clare Road in Grangetown on the evening of March 27 this year. A row broke out inside the bar and continued as those involved moved outside the premises.
Attack captured on CCTV
CCTV showed Harris punching the victim to the face with such force that he fell to the pavement, while a number of other people appeared to argue with each other. The victim rose from the floor, but Harris, who had started walking away, turned back towards Sai La Vie and punched the man again. This time the victim appeared to hit his head against a low wall as he fell backwards.
His injuries included a fractured jaw. In an impact statement read to the court by prosecution barrister Pamela Kaiga, the victim said: “Since the incident I have suffered from anxiety. I was scared of going out.
“My face will never be the same again. I have been experiencing pain every morning when I wake up. I also have nightmares.”
Previous convictions and sentencing
Miss Kaiga told the court that Harris, of Crumlin Drive, St Mellons, Cardiff, has 20 previous convictions for 32 offences, including assaulting an emergency worker.
In mitigation, barrister Kevin Seal said the argument that broke out on the night inside and outside Sai La Vie was not started by Harris and that it was “nothing really to do with him, he just got carried away with the crowd and ended up behaving worse than the others”.
Having seen the CCTV footage played in court, Recorder Dyfed Llion Thomas described the incident as “nasty”. He described the second of Harris’s punches to the victim, when he walked back towards him before striking him, as “a sneaky punch, a cowardly punch”. The judge told him: “You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.”
Having pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, Harris was sentenced to 32 weeks in prison, a term suspended for 18 months. He was also made the subject of a mental health treatment requirement and a 12-month alcohol treatment requirement.
