Melbourne coward punch victim Jaiden Walker’s parents reveal their last moments with their son

JAIDEN Walker went for a night out and never came home after he was coward punched by a stranger in Melbourne’s CBD. His devastated family say enough is enough.

IN THE final moments of Jaiden Walker’s life, his mother rested her head against his chest and listened to his heart beat.

In desperation, his father even tried to gently shake him awake.

It seems almost silly now but it was the only thing left he could do.

They had kept vigil by his bedside as surgeons tried everything to save their eldest son.

They drilled a hole in the front of his temple to help ease the pressure from a blood clot and bleeding.

Mum Heidi holds Jaiden in ICU just before his life support was switched off.

Dad Jon holds his son Jaiden's hand in ICU.

When that didn’t work they removed an entire section of bone at the back of his head.

Jaiden had fallen back onto the cement so hard his friends said they actually heard the moment his skull cracked.

He would have barely seen the punch coming, nor did he really know the man alleged to have thrown it. It all happened so fast.

But a single, stupid act of violence would set in motion the kind of tragedy that changes lives around Australia almost every week.

Sprawled on the ground in a popular Melbourne laneway, the 22-year-old never regained consciousness.

Phoned by the police at 2am, his parents Jon and Heidi rushed to be by his side in the emergency ward.

They expected to find their boy bloodied and bruised.

Instead, they discovered him tucked neatly between crisp hospital sheets, barely a mark on him.

“We honestly thought we would wait for a few hours and he would wake up with a headache but we would just take him home,’’ Mr Walker said.

But four days later the family was escorted to a sterile side room where doctors delivered the worst news.

There was nothing more they could do.

In his final hours, Mr and Mrs Walker held their boy as close as they could. Then doctors switched off his life support.

Jaiden with family.

Parents of Jaiden Walker, Jon and Heidi Walker with a picture of Jaiden. Picture: Tony Gough

ASSOCIATE professor Kate Drummond, director of Neurosurgery at Royal Melbourne Hospital said coward punch deaths still hit a raw nerve with medical teams.

It wasn’t just the senselessness, she said. Rather that every young man or woman wheeled into emergency represented another life stripped of potential.

“You shake your head and wonder why people feel a need to act out in this way,’’ Prof. Drummond said.

Anecdotally, the prevalence of one-punch attacks hasn’t spiked in hospital wards around the nation but medical professionals say they remain constant.

“It’s very hard for people to understand the implications of (their actions),’’ she said.

In almost every case it isn’t the punch that does the damage but the subsequent impact from the fall.

“The big problem with getting hit like this is that often the victim isn’t expecting it,’’ Prof. Drummond said. ``They get punched from behind or from the side.

“It’s that dead fall to the ground that does the damage.

“The head suddenly stops but the brain keeps going. It shifts within the skull.’’

She said doctors could only do so much to try and regulate the pressure on the brain.

“Even if they survive, the patients are never the same.

“They never make a fully functional recovery.’’

Jaiden is in a taxi on his way to the city the night he was king hit.

Jaiden as a young boy.

LESS than a month after Jaiden’s death, Mr and Mrs Walker found themselves seated at a gala function at Crown Casino for a fundraiser hosted by champion boxer Danny Green.

He had invited them after news of their tragedy made headlines.

They admit now that the entire night was a bit of a blur.

Embraced at every turn, well wishers offered the few words of comfort they could find.

But they weren’t there to share their grief.

Mr and Mrs Walker were now determined to ensure campaigns like Green’s had the cut through needed to shift thinking and save lives.

Ignoring his nerves, the father stood at the podium and delivered a speech straight from the heart.

In the days following Jaiden’s death, he told the audience, a biker named Bear was so moved by the circumstances of the incident, he posted about it on social media.

It was an appeal to fathers everywhere.

“Educate and bring up boys to be men of respect,’’ the man wrote. `` ... men that protect and look after not only their families but others.

“Men that don’t tolerate acts of violence against women and the vulnerable in our communities.

“Men that will never consider or accept acts of extreme cowardice like this as acceptable.’’

Mr Walker said the impassioned plea from a bloke he barely knew had moved him to tears. But had he looked around that sprawling palladium, former footballers, doctors and detectives were crying too.

Jaiden in happier times.

Jaiden before he was injured.

You could have heard a pin drop as the guests let the words of this father sink in.

But it was only the first step in what Mr Walker hopes will be a tangible social movement.

Danny Green’s Stop The Coward Punch initiative — and others like it — have been credited with helping shift the vernacular around one-punch attacks.

The media no longer refer to single acts of violence as ``king hits’’.

But the Walkers have now backed the anti-violence campaigner in his ongoing push for judges to dish out more appropriate penalties to thugs found guilty.

Green said he was disgusted by a string of recent decisions where sentences had been downgraded or where some accused had simply walked free.

“If it was one of their sons or daughters who were killed in any one of these brutal attacks, would they be willing to hand down such light sentences?’’ Green said.

“Communities around Australia are crying out for protection.

“The police do their job in getting these attackers before a judge only for them to walk free. It’s disgusting.’’

Jaiden as a young boy with his dad.

THIS week, as Mr and Mrs Walker scrolled through old photos, they had more than just their lost son on their minds. Their thoughts were also with another man and his family on the other side of the city.

On Monday, cardiac surgeon Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann, was allegedly punched in the foyer of the Box Hill Hospital.

It was an entirely different scenario, but just as insensible.

“Your heart goes out to the families,’’ Mr Walker said. ``You feel anger towards the person that did it but our hearts break for the victim and their family because we know exactly what they are going through.

“One punch got Jaiden. He was expecting it at all. He wasn’t prepared for it ...’’

But he said the broader impact of that one fleeting moment was indescribable.

“We did everything we could since the moment he entered this world to give him a good upbringing,’’ Mr Walker said. ``Every decision I made was in consideration of him and his brother. We don’t have a lot — but what we have, we did for the boys.

“It’s so frustrating that you work so hard for what you think is right and then it’s ripped away from you.’’

They remain consumed by grief. The man accused of allegedly hitting Jaiden was bailed to reappear on manslaughter charges.

Family photos of Jaiden Walker

In the meantime all they have left is a cardboard box containing their son’s ashes.

It can be easy for bereft families to put on rose coloured glasses when they lose a loved one — but Mr and Mrs Walker are certain Jaiden was a good kid.

He’d had his problems as a teenager but had emerged from the worst of it and was settling into life.

He still lived at home with his parents and younger brother Ethan. He kept a secret diary to stay motivated. His goal was to save more money, to travel and to be a good person.

But it’s in death, Mr and Mrs Walker said their son left the greatest legacy;

A desperately ill woman received his heart.

His lungs saved the life of an adult male.

His left liver was donated to a child, the right to another young man.

His pancreas and left kidney went to a young woman.

His right kidney, to a man.

Even his skin tissue was stored to be used as grafts.

“The only thing we didn’t donate were his eyes,’’ Mr Walker said. “They were just too beautiful and needed to stay with him.’’

He said nothing would bring their son back. But the family was proud his final act had helped so many others.

“He would have loved that.’’

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