Brock Anthony Woods guilty of violent attack outside Red Hot Summer Tour in Mount Gambier

A Mount Gambier father who was violently bashed after trying to aid a terrified teen has issued a shocking and painful victim impact statement to the court.

A Good Samaritan who was knocked unconscious before his attacker kicked and stomped on his head has told the court how the assault changed his life.

As he left the Red Hot Summer Tour at the Old Mount Gambier Gaol, Kim Ruge rushed to the aid of a screaming teenage girl, believing he was confronting an attempted child abductor, only to be left with a traumatic brain injury.

Homeless man, Brock Anthony Woods, 45, claimed he was acting in self defence when Mr Ruge approached the car he was using as shelter at the Mount Gambier Railway Lands.

Earlier this month a Mount Gambier District Court jury found Woods not guilty of serious harm with intent, but convicted him of the lesser charge of recklessly causing serious harm for the January 5, 2020 attack.

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On Wednesday, Mr Ruge said he had “spiralled to a new low” and 18 months on was only beginning to work through the mental impact of the assault that would have a lasting effect on his wife and five children.

“I spent so many hours of those early days not wanting to go on,” Mr Ruge said.

“Being bed ridden broke my spirit and at times my will to live.

“I am a strong person, I didn’t expect to be broken and my family and myself left to pick up the pieces.”

During the trial prosecutor Robert Walker said the Mount Gambier man was left with a shattered nose and eye socket and a mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury with Mr Ruge saying the effects of concussion lasted five weeks.

Reading a victim impact statement he wrote almost two month after the attack, Mr Ruge detailed his “terrifying” experience receiving emergency surgery in Adelaide, waking up in a distant city without his loved ones.

“It left me completely bed ridden and felt like I was out to sea in a boat in rough water,” he said.

“For the first three weeks my head felt like it was being sandwiched between a vice and tightening up and pressing my head to my brain.

“I have struggled to go out in society.

“I struggle to wake up and get myself out of bed … at the same time I have struggled to get a solid night’s sleep.”

Mr Ruge said he continued to experience blurred and double vision and “severe memory loss” describing his memory as “blackness” and was yet to have dental work after spitting out three large fragments of broken teeth during the attack.

Submissions will continue in September in Adelaide with defence lawyer Matthew Christey ordering a mental health report for Woods.