Charity volunteer killed with single punch by drunk stranger on night out
A man who killed a charity volunteer with a single punch in an unprovoked drunken attack has been jailed for nine years.
Nathaniel Bierley, 26, was out with his girlfriend celebrating their three-year anniversary in Nottingham when he crossed paths with 21-year-old Kyle Turton, whose friends described him as drunk and looking for a fight.
Witnesses said the punch knocked Nathaniel out immediately, meaning he was unable to break his fall and cracked his skull on the pavement.
He was rushed to hospital but died of catstrophic brain injuries nearly two weeks later on 17 March 2022.
Nathaniel was well known for raising money for diabetes charities around a day job at a Five Guys.
He lived with Type 1 diabetes himself and wanted to ‘change the way people viewed it’ and raise awareness of the difficult challenges patients often face.
In a statement read out to the court, his sister Louisa said: ‘Our brother always made such a big impression on all of those who knew him and made all of us proud every day.
‘He travelled the world and lived his life to the fullest and had so much more to give to this world but that’s been taken away from him.
‘We will never get to see how he would have lived the rest of his life and that hurts us so much.’
Turton was convicted of manslaughter and handed an extended sentence by the judge, which means he will be on licence for five years after release.
He could be released after serving two-thirds of the sentence if a parole hearing finds he is no longer a threat to the public.
Sentencing, Judge Stuart Rafferty QC said: ‘You didn’t intend to kill him, that’s true ,because you are charged with manslaughter, not murder.
‘But that doesn’t diminish the impact of what you did to him and his family – who had the awful cruelty of spending day after day at hospital waiting to see if he would live. Tragically he did not.
‘There will come a time for you when you will go home and you will go back to normal life but for them, that will never happen.’
The court was told Turton had been stabbed in the street a year before and ‘should have known how to keep out of trouble’.
Speaking directly to the defendant, Nathaniel’s sister added: ‘You have taken the life of a young man that was so loved, loved life and was always so dedicated to making a change and standing up for other’s rights.
‘The pain and hurt you have caused to all of us.
‘You have ruined every birthday and every Christmas because you didn’t just take Nathaniel’s life you took all of our lives when you took my brother’s life.’
Many UK police forces have promoted the ‘One Punch Can Kill’ campaign to raise awareness of the devastating impact a single strike can cause regardless of intent.
Several people a year die as a result of single punches, which can cause a victim to fall unconscious with relatively little force if they land on vulnerable parts of the head.
Earlier this year Paul Brierley, 44, was jailed for six years for killing his friend Paul Ologbose in one such incident after finding out he had had a fling with his ex-girlfriend.
In March, Nojan Kafi, 36, a bouncer at Dubai Café in Rusholme, was jailed for nearly five years after he hit a patron Emmanuel Simon, 33, causing him to fall unconscious to the ground and die two weeks later.
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