Teens beat Worthing father 'almost to death' and joked about it, jury told

Care worker Alan Willson was struck with a wooden log and suffered horrific injuries in the attack in a park on Easter Sunday last year, Hove Crown Court heard. He suffered life-changing injuries.

Mr Willson, 46, confronted the three teenagers after another boy said one of them had pushed him over in a row over a frisbee.

Care worker Alan Willson was struck in Longcroft Park, Worthing

Gemma White, prosecuting, told a jury: “The Crown’s case is that this was a vicious and frenzied group attack with a pack mentality.”

Mr Willson stayed in hospital for nearly three months. Asked about his recovery, wife Annie Willson said: “He has recovered as much as he’s going to.

“He will never speak again. He has no mental capacity although it fluctuates. He is continent but not always. He is the most frustrated person I’ve ever seen because on the days when he has capacity, he knows what he wants to say but he can’t say it.”

Care worker Alan Willson was struck with a wooden log and suffered horrific injuries in the attack

The boy who witnessed the attack described how Mr Willson and the other three boys started arguing.

The boy told police: “One of them just came like grabbing and pushing him and then they all started whacking him with like stumps or like really large thick sticks.”

Mr Willson was bleeding heavily from his ears and head when his wife found him lying on a park footpath near their home in Worthing.

Longcroft Park, Worthing

The defendants showed no emotion as they flicked through images of the injuries.

“When Annie Willson came across her husband, she saw him on the floor, laying on his right side just off the path,” said Miss White.

“Annie Willson described the blood as so thick it looked more like jam.

“He was making gasping breaths as if he was sucking air through clenched teeth.”

One of the boys can now be named as Harry Furlong, 18, from Horsham

Mrs Willson was told by doctors the injuries were catastrophic and they did not believe he would survive.

The jury was shown the 90cm long, 2.5kg, bloodstained log recovered from the scene.

Miss White said the boys approached a group of four teenage girls at a railway station and demonstrated their vicious assault less than an hour after Mr Willson was found fighting for life, she said.

Alan Willson was airlifted to the Royal Sussex County Hospital

The three teenagers shifted uncomfortably in the dock as the jury was played CCTV footage showing what Miss White described as them re-enacting their assault of Mr Willson as he was being taken to hospital.

One of the girls described to police how they were “bragging”, Miss White said.

“One of the boys was, in her view, mocking the situation, saying something like ‘oh he was on the floor and someone was yelling please stop, please stop’.

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“She remarked that there did not appear to be any remorse and repeated that they were ‘bragging’, and that the second boy as she described them specifically was giggling and laughing when mocking.”

One of the boys can now be named as Harry Furlong, 18, from Horsham.

He wore a blue suit in the dock and the court heard he was arrested after phoning police to say he wanted to hand himself in.

“This was in effect a confession by Harry Furlong to being part of the group attack on Alan Willson,” Miss White said.

The other boys were aged 13 and 14 and wore T-shirts in court.

Miss White said the boys will say they were defending themselves from Mr Willson who was the aggressor. They will say they were attempting to disarm him, the court heard.

“It is suggested by one of the boys that Alan Willson was swinging the stick towards them,” Miss White said.

As the trial opened, the jury heard a harrowing list of the horrific injuries.

Mr Willson suffered brain damage, skull fractures, facial fractures, damage to his eyes and rib fractures. He was kept in a coma.

“It is likely that Alan Willson will be left with significant and permanent neurological damage, which may be severe and life changing,” Miss White said.

“At the time immediately after the assault in April 2021 it was still a real possibility that he would not recover and he may have died.”

Another of the girls described the boys giggling about the attack.

“She saw one of them doing ‘like fake beating in the air’. She described how they were kind of ‘giggling and throwing punches and then stuff like that and just kind of replaying what had happened’,” Miss White said.

“She recalled that one of them mentioned hitting them with something, she wasn’t sure what it was but understood it to be hitting the victim with something.

“She further explained that it was like ‘I’m hitting him over and over again and something along the lines of that. There was a point where they were kind of re-enacting what was happening and just laughing about it’,” Miss White said.

Another girl described the boys joking about almost killing somebody.

“She described how the boys were shouting and said she remembered them ‘talking about how they had just got into a fight, and they were shouting about it, and I think I remember them, oh at the time I thought they were joking about how they thought they had almost killed somebody’.

“One of the boys showed her his fists were scuffed and was ‘bragging about how he got into a fight’,” Miss White said.

One of the boys boasted it was not the worst thing he had done.

“A witness states the 13-year-old was saying ‘oh it’s OK like, I got off probation two weeks before’ and then the 14-year-old was bragging about ‘oh this isn’t my worse crime I’ve done, I’ve done worse, like it’s nothing’. She stated that she could tell the older boy was panicked but that they kept saying to him ‘just say no comment, say no comment, it’ll be fine’.

“She recalled that the 13-year-old had said that he’d gone home and changed his clothes. She said that at the station the boys looked ‘happy with what had happened, they didn’t look concerned or anything....it didn’t seem like it had been that severe by the way how they were acting because all they could brag about was how they’ve done worse crimes and they’ve just got off probation’.

“She said ‘it was only the one of them that acted scared about anything that was going to happen’ referring to the older one.

“She described that they kept saying that ‘this older man started attacking them for no reason’ but observed that they didn’t look like they had been attacked.

“She explained that the boys had said they were walking up the road to get to the station and ‘an older man approached them and was shouting at them and then just started attacking them. They said that they... he was trying to stab them with logs and was like hitting them with logs’.

“She stated that she pointed out that they didn’t look like they had been in a fight, and this was when they were bragging and showing her the scraped knuckles, which she thought weren’t bad and were just a bit bloody, ‘nothing too major’. It was the older boy that had a little cut in his hand and the two younger ones who has slight grazes. None of them had cuts or bruises on their faces. She described the grazes as like when you’ve punched someone.”

Another female witness described how the teenagers bragged about their attack, Miss White said.

“She described how she went to the Goring train station just before 8pm together with her group of friends. She saw that Harry Furlong was already there. She described how the boys started talking about how ‘the choppers are after us’, and they were just saying things... kind of bragging about the fact that they had these police after them’,” Miss White told the jury. “She though they were trying to impress her and her friends because in everything they were saying they appeared to be ‘bragging’.

“She described that one of them had a bag and he said ‘oh if they turn up here, you’ll be our alibis and we’ll tell the police we were with you the whole night on an Easter egg hunt’. They were comparing their hands and saying that had injuries on their hands,” Miss White said.

Police were called to Whitebeam Road in Worthing at around 7.30pm on Easter Sunday, April 4, last year after Mr Willson was found injured in the street following the assault in nearby Longcroft Park.

He was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton where he had brain surgery. His life-changing injuries included spinal fractures, lung trauma and broken bones and after months in hospital, is continuing rehabilitation in a specialist facility.

Furlong and the two teenage boys deny grievous bodily harm with intent. The trial continues.