A Canberra man has been jailed for a drunken one-punch assault on the outskirts of Civic that left his victim with permanent vision loss in one eye.
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Aaron Michael Dunn, 26, pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court to recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm after police watched as he dealt a blow to the man's face in the early hours of February 24 this year.
Justice David Mossop said, in a judgement published last week, the facts giving rise to the offence were "unfortunately, of a predictable nature".
"They involve one young man full of alcohol in Civic being violent towards another. The victim was out with friends and had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol."
The victim was on his way back to his hotel when he asked Dunn and another man for directions.
Police noticed the two men, each in a fighting stance and with clenched fists, near the intersection of Mort Street and Cooyong Street about 12.40am.
Dunn told police, "This bloke's been following and abusing me all night" before the officers told the men it was time to go home.
The men had crossed the road to the Braddon McDonald's carpark and exchanged words before police told Dunn to leave.
Instead, he walked up to the victim and punched him in the face. The man fell to the ground with blood seeping from his right eye.
As police arrested Dunn he said: "What was I meant to do, I couldn't let that go."
The man, who was drifting in and out of consciousness, was taken to hospital. He suffered a traumatic rupture to his right eye, a deep laceration to his cornea and loss of the lens of his eye. He had two operations.
"At the time of discharge from hospital his vision in his right eye was poor and he was only able to count fingers at a distance of one metre," Justice Mossop said.
"He also suffered bruising. He will suffer permanent loss of vision to his right eye, the exact degree of which is not known."
In a victim impact statement, the man said he was still unable to see anything out of his right eye with any clarity and suffered debilitating headaches and severe pain.
The man, who worked as a firefighter, said his eye had a blackened appearance and he wore an eye patch in public because he was embarrassed and self-conscious.
Justice Mossop noted the consequences of the attack had been "severe" and said the assault had obviously had "significant and long-lasting" impact on the victim, as well as his family and the broader community.
He said while there had been animosity and threats of violence between the two men, the victim had not appeared to have provoked the offender.
Dunn, whose employers described him as a "hard-working, diligent and honest young man", was assessed by a pre-sentence report author as a low to medium risk of reoffending. He had also started drug and alcohol counselling.
But the judge said his crime required "a very high degree of general deterrence" given the "all-too-common coincidence between alcohol use and violence amongst young males".
He sentenced the man to two years and three months imprisonment, with 11 months to be served behind bars. His sentence would be suspended from July 2018 upon Dunn entering into a three-year good behaviour order.
