A TEENAGER will serve less than six weeks in prison for his involvement in a brutal drunken assault which left a man brain damaged.

Kyle McGauley pleaded guilty to repeatedly kicking Jason Vennell, a 36-year-old father of two from Bulford, as he lay unconscious during the attack in Trowbridge on New Year’s Day.

Judge Euan Ambrose sentenced the 18-year-old to eight months but, because McGauley has been on a tagged curfew since the motiveless attack, he will get 88 days knocked off the four months he actually has to serve behind bars.

Mr Vennell, a self-employed grounds and landscape contractor and trainee coach at Moonrakers Judo Club in Salisbury, was visiting his mother and stepfather for the Christmas holiday when the attack happened. He spent more than five hours in surgery to relieve the swelling on his brain and was in a coma for 21 days.

He has been at Glenside Manor, a specialist neurological rehabilitation centre in South Newton, since February and has had to learn how to walk and talk again.

He is still suffering memory loss and problems with his speech as a result of the attack.

Speaking after the sentencing, his mother Jackie, 60, said: “This guy has gone down for maybe six weeks but he’s lived a normal life for the last six months, he’s carried on with his job, while Jason has, effectively, been in a type of prison and he’s lost his business. It seems the wrong way round to me.” Mrs Vennell described it as “a mother’s nightmare” and said the family is trying to get Jason back to some kind of normality.

“He’s doing well now but we don’t know yet if he’ll get back 100 per cent, they say everybody’s different. He needs somebody with him all the time because sometimes he forgets where he is. It wouldn’t be safe for him to be on his own. It’s just like dementia but 40 years too soon.We’re all trying to struggle on but it’s not easy.”

Prosecuting, Robin Shellard told Swindon Crown Court CCTV footage showed Mr Vennell outside a nightclub in the town centre at 5.30am having an animated argument with Oliver Martin, who was 17 at the time.

Town centre CCTV showed Mr Vennell running along a number of roads with the two men behind him, and then a couple in Union Street saw a youth, believed to be Martin, dragging a body into the churchyard.

The court heard he kicked the unconscious man repeatedly in the head and McGauley, who didn’t know either of the men, joined in. McGauley was arrested after police found the victim’s blood on his shoes and, when questioned, he said he had kicked Mr Vennell more than three times, but had not kicked him in the head.

He said he had seen the disagreement outside the club and followed Martin fearing there would be violence, which he planned to stop. He said, after joining in the attack, he came to his senses when Martin told him to take things from the victim.

McGauley, of Budbury Tyning, Bradford on Avon, who had no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm. Defending him, Alex Daymond said: “What he did that night, I suggest, was wholly out of character and the reason behind it may forever remain a mystery.”

Martin, now 18, of Sambourne Road, Warminster, will be sentenced at a later date after pleading guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent.