Thug’s punch left father of three brain damaged

AGLOATING thug who used his phone to make a video of his critically injured victim lying unconscious in the road has been jailed.

Liam Reynolds laid out Mark Viveash with a single punch which knocked him cold and caused permanent brain injuries which mean he can longer walk or talk and needs 24-hour care.

He knocked him down in the centre of Newton Abbot as revenge for an earlier incident in which Mr Viveash had tried to stop Reynolds and a gang of three teenaged friends from behaving anti-socially.

Father-of-three Mr Viveash suffered a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain that caused irreparable damage so severe that he is still being treated in a rehabilitation centre in Plymouth more than two years after the attack.

His father Ken wrote a moving victim impact statement which said his son had been condemned to a life sentence by the attack and would still be suffering for decades after Reynolds has served his sentence and been released.

Police found Reynolds in the process of editing the video of Mr Viveash lying motionless on the ground when they arrested him shortly afterwards. In it, he can be heard boasting that he had ‘slumped him out’.

A judge at Exeter Crown Court told Reynolds he was a coward and a thug and that he and his friends had been ‘playing at being little gangsters’ as they roamed the streets looking for trouble in the hour before the attack.

Reynolds, aged 20, of New Street, Brixham, who was living at East Street, Newton Abbot at the time, denied causing grievous bodily harm but was found guilty by a jury and jailed for two years and ten months by Judge David Evans.

He told him:”I hope everyone concerned will understand that no sentence I can pass can make good the appalling long-term harm you have caused to the victim, his family and friends.

“You and your friends were all playing at being little gangsters. You did not look to help Mr Viveash, no, you took out your mobile phone and too a gloating video in which you were heard saying you had slumped him out.

“Your ludicrous suggestion that you did that while in a state of shock is rendered even more ridiculous by the fact that you ran from the scene and went home to edit the footage so you could put it on Snapchat to create a glorified record of the assault.

“This attack was a vicious piece of unnecessary revenge by the thug and coward you were at the time.”

Mr Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting, said there had been one confrontation between Mr Viveash and a group of youths led by Reynolds on September 3, 2018, about an hour before the attack.

The gang had wandering around Newton Abbot causing trouble and Mr Viveash remonstrated with them and threw a punch at Reynolds, which missed, and then moved away to a pub in Queen Street.

The youths found him there and taunted him on two different occasions before he followed one of them into nearby King Street. Reynolds followed and attacked him without warning or provocation.

He then filmed the attack on his mobile phone and fled the scene. He was identified by police from CCTV and eye witnesses