Chelsea Townend said the brutal and vicious assault of her husband on a Penticton, B.C., beach in May 2019 not only ruined his life but hers as well.
In June, Thomas Kruger-Allen, 23, pleaded guilty to the aggravated assault of Brad Eliason, as well as the assault of two other people, on Okanagan Lake beach.
A fourth count of sexual assault was dropped in exchange for the pleas.
Chelsea Townend said her husband, Eliason, suffered a traumatic brain injury in the one-punch attack.
He continues to suffer from short-term memory loss, grand mal seizures and will be on seizure medication for the rest of his life. He has not returned to work since the attack.
Townend said the assault also destroyed their marriage and the pair are now separated.
“This is just the aftermath of the trauma and everything we have been through, it either makes you or breaks you,” she told Global News on Sunday.
Kruger-Allen is scheduled for sentencing on Tuesday in the Supreme Court at Penticton.
“We are definitely hoping for some justice. I am very much friends with Brad and supportive, and we support each other and this has just been horrible trauma that has happened to both of us,” she said.
The maximum sentence for aggravated assault is 14 years in prison.
Townend said Eliason was enjoying a bonfire with a friend when at around 11:30 p.m., two intoxicated and unknown men approached.
The young men harassed a group of nearby youth and that’s when things began to escalate, she said.
Eliason, a Good Samaritan, intervened in the dispute when he was assaulted.
He fell back and smashed his head on a concrete walkway, she said.
Eliason was rushed to Kelowna General Hospital and underwent emergency brain surgery, according to Townend.
He required 56 stitches to his skull and he was placed in a medically induced coma because of the swelling on his brain.
Townend said her husband was in a coma for three weeks and returned to the hospital for a craniotomy, which is a surgical operation in which a bone flap is temporarily removed from the skull to access the brain.
“It’s drastically changed him, he is not the same person.”
Eliason declined to comment on Sunday but said he will be at the courthouse in person for Kruger-Allen’s sentencing hearing this week.
Following the attacker’s guilty plea in June, Eliason told Global News he may never be able to work again.
“I can’t do anything so, and it basically ruined it,” he said. “It’s like hell freezing over, that’s all I can say.”
Kruger-Allen’s lawyer, James Pennington, did not respond when asked Sunday if his client would like to say anything about the incident.
He did confirm he’d be seeking a sentence “in the provincial range” and that Kruger-Allen has been in custody since October 2019.
Kruger-Allen was serving 18 months’ probation for his role in a 2017 swarming attack outside the now-shuttered Mule nightclub at the time of the beach attack.
While out on bail for assaulting Eliason, Kruger-Allen is accused of committing another violent crime in October 2019.
Police told Global News that Kruger-Allen was arrested on Oct. 19 for a break-in and assaulting two people, both of whom were known to him.
Police say the victims suffered serious, non-life-threatening injuries.
Kruger-Allen was charged with two counts of assault causing bodily harm, break and enter, mischief, uttering threats, and two counts of breach of recognizance.
He goes to trial in May.
His bail was revoked in the wake of the new, unrelated charges, and Kruger-Allen has been in custody ever since.
Townend is concerned Kruger-Allen may get out of prison on credit for time served as he has been in custody for more than one year.
“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I don’t want anyone to ever go through what we did and it’s a very scary thought to think they could say, ‘time served.'”
She plans to read a victim impact statement on Tuesday, so the sentencing judge knows how the beach attack affected her life, even though she wasn’t present during the assault.
“It’s only fair that I get to say what I need to say and how this has affected and ruined my life.”
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