A YOUNG chef suffered a seizure and a blood clot on his brain after an unprovoked attack with a rounders bat.

Danny Hewett was hit once with the wooden bat as he walked past the Three Horseshoes pub, in Corn Street, Witney, at 2.30am.

His attacker Thomas Mayne was with two other men, who wanted to sort out a disagreement with the victim’s friends, Oxford Crown Court heard on Friday.

Cathy Olliver, prosecuting, said Mr Hewett was approached by the men in the early hours of November 29 last year but refused to give details of his friends.

She said: “He told them to go away and Mr Mayne struck him on the head with a rounders bat or short version of a baseball bat with blue tape around the handle.”

Miss Olliver said the victim did not fall to the floor and was able to make his way home, but his condition worsened and he was admitted to hospital, where he suffered a seizure and was kept in for nine days.

Mayne, 21, of Mountfield Road, Witney, was later arrested in Devon.

David Emmanuel, defending, said the attack was “a moment of madness”. He added: “It was a single blow, it was almost a lashing out, a one-off thing immediately regretted.

“This is a young man full of contrition.”

Recorder Clive Broe jailed Mayne for two years and six months and said: “Mr Hewett had done absolutely nothing to deserve that assault.

“All he had done at most was decline to give your friends a phone number. I regard the attack as entirely unprovoked.”