A MURDER investigation has been launched after a 56-year-old man died following a vicious attack in Oxford city centre.

Eamonn Anderson, of Salter Close, was rushed to hospital with serious head injuries after being kicked off his bike in High Street, Oxford, last month.

His life support machine was switched off last Tuesday and he died as a result of his injuries on Friday.

Mr Anderson, a reformed bank robber, had spent more than 24 years of his life behind bars for armed robbery and firearms offences. Grace Fleming, 19, of Lake Street, told how she had adopted him as a father figure after meeting at The White House pub in Abingdon Road a year ago.

She described her devastation upon discovering he was fighting for his life at the hospital.

She said: “First he went missing for a while, but he was an adventurous guy so he would just take off sometimes and do his own thing.

“Then I heard from the police that he’d had an accident. He had actually come off his bike a couple of months before that and when I went to see him he was being his old self and chatting up the nurses, so that’s what I expected.

“When I went in this time and saw him the way he was I was just in total shock. He was one of these characters you thought of as completely invincible.”

Ms Fleming’s mum, Lucy Summerfield-Cartwright, also a friend of Mr Anderson, said she was equally stunned by Mr Anderson’s death.

The 39-year-old said: “I truly thought he was going to make it. He could hear what we were saying. He was there.”

The teenager, who spent most of the summer with Mr Anderson, said he was loved by many in spite of his murky past.

She continued: “He was an absolute loveable rogue. He had the biggest heart, and was so funny and full of stories about all of his adventures. He was just adored by so many people.”

Mr Anderson, who grew up in Brixton, endured his longest stint in prison during the 1980s, when he served just over eight years after being jailed for his part in nine bank robberies and firearms offences.

He was jailed for an armed robbery at Tesco in Abingdon in 2002 and was featured on the front page of the Oxford Mail after stealing a ring which had belonged to Oscar Wilde from Magdalen College in Oxford.

He tried to reform on different occasions and, during one such period, studied law at Ruskin College Oxford.

In 2011 he told the Oxford Mail there should be harsher penalties for violent crimes.

On October 25 this year, Mr Anderson was cycling in High Street between 11.30pm and 11.45pm when he was approached by a group of six young men. One of them kicked him, causing him to fall off his bike.

The group then fled the scene and witnesses called police and ambulance.

Detective chief inspector Mike Lynch, of Thames Valley Police’s Major Crime Unit, said: “This was a violent attack, which initially left the victim with serious head injuries, and has now tragically led to his death.

“We believe this to have been an isolated incident, and since it occurred, we have been in the process of conducting a thorough investigation into it in order to establish the circumstances and also to arrest those responsible.”

He urged anybody with information about the incident to contact police.