Ricky’s Bar attack victim Tony Schofield is “half the man he was”

Mar 10 2010 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

FATHER and grandfather Tony Schofield is “half the man he was” after he was subjected to a brutal, motiveless attack.

The 54-year-old father-of-six, who also has two grandsons, was lucky to survive after he was beaten to a pulp by a four-strong gang outside Ricky’s Bar on Leeds Road.

Daniel Lockwood, 22, (pictured) Daniel Mullins, 24, Gareth Garside, 23, and Jamie Wood, 24, were yesterday jailed for a combined total of 21-and-a-half years for the attack.

But Mr Schofield’s daughter Tara, 24, said no sentence could compensate for the impact of the assault.

Fighting back tears, the mum-of-two, of Trinity Street, Huddersfield, said: “No amount of time they got was ever going to be enough, because it’s never going to bring my dad back to the way he was.

“He’s half the man he was. They have taken half his life away.

“Some days you get a little piece of him, but some days he’s standing there but he’s not really there.

“All we can say is we’re grateful he’s alive.”

Mr Schofield, known as ‘Little Tony’ because of his diminutive stature, was left for dead after being attacked outside the Bradley Mills pub, where he was a regular, on July 31 last year.

Tara was called by police shortly after the incident to say that her father was at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

She said: “Sitting in the relatives’ room at the hospital was the longest 10 minutes of my life. I thought he was already gone.

“When I went in to see him his head was triple the normal size. You couldn’t see his eyes, he had a footprint on his right cheek and his lips were completely swollen up. It was awful.