Anger over jail term for Telford attack
A 16-month jail sentence given to a bouncer who left a handyman with injuries which left him brain-damaged for life is an "utter disgrace", his family said today.
Relatives of father-of-three Scott Taylor said the sentence handed out to doorman Neil Hotchkiss following the attack at the Bar Station in Wellington was "ridiculous".
Mr Taylor's daughter Kirsty, 19, who is also her father's full-time carer, said: "There's shoplifters that get longer than that.
"My dad's life is ruined, he can't get up, he can't get out of bed himself, he can't even sit up himself."
Mr Taylor, who is also a grandad-of-one, has been left with a dent in his head and wheelchair-bound after the attack. He was knocked out cold by a single punch after being asked to leave the club by Hotchkiss in August 2012.
He suffered a skull fracture and extensive brain damage when he fell after being punched and was rushed to the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in a critical condition where he was initially placed on a life support machine.
Surgeons at the hospital had to remove part of Mr Taylor's skull and place it in his stomach before inserting it back into his head in another operation several months later.
Mr Taylor has suffered permanent brain damage and is confined to a wheelchair. He has also had to move into a warden-assisted bungalow and he is visited by carers four times a day.
Kirsty said before surgeons completed surgery on her father it looked like "a quarter of his head was missing."
Hotchkiss, a father-of-eight from Leegomery, Telford, was sentenced at Shrewsbury Crown Court on Wednesday (MAR 19). He admitted a charge of causing grievous bodily harm.
Sentencing Hotchkiss, Recorder Adrian Jack said Mr Taylor would "never recover" from the injuries he had suffered.
The court also heard that Hotchkiss had "dramatically overreacted" and that Mr Taylor had not been acting aggressively before the attack.
