A FORMER English army corporal has been consigned to a desk job and an inactive life with non-stop headaches after being savagely attacked in Dublin's Temple Bar area.
Conor Shaw (33), whose hobbies had included hang-gliding, sky diving, mountain climbing and abseiling, was kicked unconscious in the early hours of Easter Sunday morning, 2006, at the Central Bank Plaza after "something funny" was said about his assailant's brother's hair.
Mark Cummins (35) of St Teresa's Gardens, Donore Avenue, Rialto, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing serious harm to Mr Shaw.
Det Garda Brendan Suttle told Colm Ó Briain, prosecuting, that two bystanders saw Cummins kick Mr Shaw "full force" into the face about five times while he was on the ground. This followed a scuffle between Cummins and his brother on one side, and Mr Shaw and his friend on the other. The scuffle had ended when Cummins returned and attacked Mr Shaw.
Cummins, who had drunk eight pints and a dozen bottles of beer that day, handed himself in to gardaí 10 days later, after the crime featured on Crimeline. Mr Ó Briain read from a medical report that Mr Shaw was admitted to intensive care with cranial and facial injuries, and a depressed fracture of the frontal bone beneath his forehead. He underwent neurosurgery, his skull being opened to relieve pressure on his brain.
Mr Shaw told Judge Desmond Hogan he was hospitalised for five weeks after the "life-changing experience" which left titanium plates in his head, and the main recovery took a year. Mr Shaw said his eye-socket and nasal passage had to be rebuilt, and he lost his sense of smell; his cheekbone collapsed; his forehead is artificial and he acquired secondary infections. "I've a constant dull headache. Sometimes it gets so bad I have to go to bed for a week or so," he said. He is on a lifetime prescription of antidepressants to help him sleep, due to nerve damage.
Caroline Biggs, defending, said Cummins's life had fallen apart since the incident, which happened after someone in Mr Shaw's party made a comment about Cummins's brother's hair.
He was immediately remorseful for the attack and the taxi driver who brought him home said he had his head in his hands, saying he shouldn't have done it.
Judge Hogan adjourned sentencing for preparation of a probation and psychological report.