The skill of doctors at two hospitals brought back an attack victim from the brink of death, a judge heard.

Judge Rhys Rowlands told the attacker, 21-year-old Connor Hooley, a builder : “It doesn’t overstate matters to say you could well have killed him.”

Hooley pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent on Christopher Lloyd, aged 36, a chef, and also to common assault on his friend and was sent to prison for eight years.

The two local men had been drinking in the Boar’s Head pub at Ruthin, Denbighshire in the early hours when both men were ejected after Hooley had grabbed Mr Lloyd around the throat, causing him to fall and injure his arm on broken glass.

The motive for the attack according to Sion ap Mihangel, prosecuting at Caernarfon crown court, was that Hooley thought being barred would prevent him from seeing his girlfriend, who worked there.

In the street he’d wrestled Mr Sion Jones, a friend of Mr Lloyd, to the ground, and was clearly drunk. Then he went in the opposite direction to find Mr Lloyd.

Mr ap Mihangel described how a housewife Caroline Duckworth had been woken up after she heard a thud and then shouting, and saw Mr Lloyd lying motionless and defenceless on the floor, Hooley aiming kicks at his back and head. She saw three kicks, the third time Hooley stepped back “as if kicking a football.”.

Mr Lloyd was rushed to Glan Clwyd Hospital with critical abdomen and pancreas injuries which required multiple blood transfusions and at 5.15am had a cardiac arrest and was transferred by helicopter to a trauma unit at Stoke on Trent, where he remained for eight days.

In an impact statement read to the court Mr Lloyd said the first he knew what had happened was when he woke up at Stoke on Trent, his family beside the bed. “Doctors told me I was extremely lucky to be alive,” he added. He had been due to start a new job as a pastry chef, which he had lost, and he was still l affected by the injuries and in pain “but I was incredibly lucky to survive such a nasty attack.”

Mr ap Mihangel told the judge that Hooley had an assault conviction in 2015 in which he had attacked a man in the street in a row over a girlfriend, punching him several times. He had also climbed on the bonnet of the man’s car and smashed the windscreen.

Simon Killeen, defending, said that Hooley, who had been charged originally with attempted murder before it was reduced to gbh, was determined to take advantage of courses in prison to address his offending. He had felt wronged, was remorseful, and had an issue with his maturity. His girlfriend was standing by him.

Passing sentence Judge Rowlands told Hooley : “You believed you were going to be barred from the pub where your girlfriend was working.” It was a cowardly, premeditated attack. Mr Lloyd had been saved by the best possible medical skill at two hospitals.

After the case Detective Inspector Chris Bell said; “ This was a nasty sustained attack which had a profound effect on the victim and his family and deeply upset the community. Hooley’s sentence reflects the magnitude of his crime.”