A "senseless and unprovoked" one-punch attack outside a Civic nightclub has left a man with brain damage, a fractured skull and numerous other lifelong injuries.
"I am a broken man and my life has changed forever," the victim said in an impact statement read to the ACT Supreme Court on Friday.
"I could have died that night and have not stopped thinking of all the countless one-punch attacks that have taken so many lives."
His attacker, 21-year-old Andrew Junior Apelu Saulo, was serving an intensive correction order for "near-identical" violent offending on the morning of his latest crime.
Agreed facts outline how Saulo and his victim separately attended Civic's 88mph in the early hours of September 24, 2023.
Both groups were asked to leave the nightclub after a man with Saulo made a woman in the victim's group feel uncomfortable and a scuffle broke out.
Saulo and his group of five or six men approached the victim while the same woman tried to intervene.
CCTV captured the serial attacker punching the victim, immediately knocking him backwards on the concrete and causing him to hit his head on the gutter. Saulo is seen quickly walking away.
The victim outlined the life-changing effects the attack had and continues to have on him.
He suffered traumatic brain injuries, multiple skull fractures, a dislocated jaw, facial nerve palsy, hearing loss, and loss of taste and smell, among other injuries.
"I feel useless and powerless to provide for my family and others," the victim told the court.
"This incident has taken away my joy of life, happiness."
In her own victim impact statement, the man's wife said: "This nightmare has turned our lives upside down."
Legal Aid lawyer Nathan Deakes said his client "blacked out or he saw red and threw the punch" but there was no excuse for the man's sober actions.
Citing a letter of apology, Saulo having handed himself into police after his image was circulated, and his client's purported reform, Mr Deakes said: "The criminal justice system will not see Mr Saulo again."
However, prosecutor Emma Bayliss told the court Saulo had made similar promises of change following his previous attacks and she said a community sentence had not deterred him.
Saulo, who has spent almost eight months in custody since his arrest, is set to learn his fate next month.
