AN Oxford Brookes University student who broke a man’s jaw with a single punch in a street brawl has been convicted of causing grievous bodily harm.

Second year planning and property student Fred Edwards of Cowley Road, East Oxford, was unanimously convicted yesterday of punching Carlos Casas during a mass brawl in the city centre in the early hours of December 16.

The 21-year old was also cleared of another charge of assaulting Carlos’s friend Manuel Soler, who filmed the attack on his mobile phone.

During the trial at Oxford Crown Court the jury of eight women and four men were told how Edwards, who is originally from Canterbury, Kent, had been at the Emporium nightclub celebrating the end of the student term.

There was a fight inside and Edwards was removed from the club by bouncers.

Minutes later a brawl erupted outside in Queen Street, near to the Halifax bank, in which Edwards was filmed taking a step before lunging at Carlos and hitting him with such force he needed hospital treatment and couldn’t eat properly for months.

When he was interviewed by police at Abingdon police station, he later described the blow as a ‘seven out of 10’ and his defence had claimed at trial it was a ‘pre-emptive strike’ made in self-defence.

Taking to the witness box during the trial Erasmus student at Oxford Brookes University Carlos Casas, speaking with the aid of a Spanish interpreter, said he had only become involved in the brawl to ‘calm the situation down.’

He said: “[Edwards] hit me in the jaw and he cracked my jaw with a single blow. I fell on to the floor”

He said that when he got back up he felt dazed and noticed that his jaw ‘was not in the same place anymore and it was bleeding.’

Mr Casas sustained a fractured jaw and was treated at the John Radcliffe Hospital the same night.

He told jurors he could not eat properly for 3 months after the attack and no longer plays sports in fear of injuring his face.

Edwards had taken to the stand during the trial and although he accepted the punch he told jurors it was an act of self-defence and had denied the charges.

He will be sentenced on August 25. Judge Zoe Smith warned he 'clearly crosses the custody threshold.’