WHEN charity worker Michael Rogers went to a Kidlington pub last summer, he was looking forward to a few quiet drinks with friends.

But after an unprovoked attack that damaged his brain and shattered his life, the 31-year-old now has to breathe through a ventilator and is fed through a tube.

Eleven months on, chef Mr Rogers is still at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and might never walk or talk again.

On Friday, 21-year-old amateur kickboxer Logan Usher, who initially told police he had not thrown any punches, and then falsely claimed his victim was aggressively drunk, was jailed after admitting causing grievous bodily harm.

CCTV footage shown in court showed Usher “showing off” in the beer garden by practising a “kung fu kick” moments before the attack, prosecutor Peter Coombe said.

Describing the video, he added: “Then you see Mr Rogers walk past, almost brush past the defendant. Then you see the defendant punch him once then go back and throw a much heavier punch.”

The second blow, described by Judge Patrick Eccles as “a very, very forceful punch indeed”, knocked Mr Rogers to the floor.

That night in hospital, the pressure in his brain reached 32 times the normal level and he fell into a coma.

Months of medical intervention have followed, but the future is bleak.

A former drug addict, Mr Rogers had come to Oxfordshire to get clean at the Ley Community in Yarnton and ended up an ambassador for the centre before going to work at the News Cafe in the centre of Oxford.

The keen Nottingham Forest fan had been off drugs for two years when he agreed to meet friends at the Red Lion in Kidlington last June.

Quoting a doctor’s report from April, Mr Coombe said: “Patients usually make 90 per cent of their recovery in the first year, therefore the prognosis is not good, so he will be forever dependent.

“There is a significant probability he may not be able to walk or talk again and hope diminishes as time goes on.”

Usher, of Croxford Gardens, Kidlington, had previously denied causing GBH with intent but admitted the less-serious charge, which carries a maximum five years in jail.

In a letter written to the court, he said: “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Mr Rogers and his family.

“I didn’t intend for this to happen and I would truly give anything to take it back. I can only imagine the pain it has caused Mr Rogers and those closest to him, and for that I am sorry more than I will ever be able to show.”

Judge Eccles jailed Usher, who has two cautions for violence, for 30 months.

He told Usher: “Michael Rogers stood no chance. There was no way in which he could defend himself against you and he did nothing to warrant the way you reacted.

“His quality of life has all but gone.”

After the case, Michael Rogers’s parents, Patricia McFarlane and Grahame Rogers, spoke of their anguish over their son’s condition.

Miss McFarlane, who spends each week day away from her home in Nottingham to be with her son, said: “We’ve got to live with a son who might never recover from this.

Described by Judge Eccles as “a complete saint” for looking after her son and raising £2,500 for a new wheelchair at the hospital, she said of the sentence: “It’s not enough justice for what he’s gone through, but it’s enough justice for what the judge could pass.

“If you are going to hit someone you have to be prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences.”

Mr Rogers said: “He was loving life, he was finally making something of himself.”

Speaking of Usher he added: “I don’t think he felt any remorse.”