Victim of gang attack loses both his legs

Keith Alder was beaten with baseball bats and kicked unconscious by five men as he returned home from a night out in the Great Horton area of Bradford.

The 66-year-old has spent four months in hospital. The father-of-three suffered head injuries and kidney damage from the attack, which led to pneumonia.

He has had emergency surgery to remove most of his bowel after scans revealed it had rotted, and was then put into an induced coma for a week.

On top of this he is still fighting an MRSA infection and last Friday, gangrene cost him both legs above the knee.

His wife Kath, 67, said: “Everything that’s happened was triggered by the attack that night.

“If he’d stayed at the club and had one more drink it would not have happened to him.

Mrs Alder, who was on holiday with her sister in Majorca at the time, said: “He’s gone down from 17 stone to about seven stone. You can see his bones, he’s like something out of a concentration camp.

“He is a strong man, friends call him Big John. No-one else could have got through it like he has, but this battle will be with us for the rest of our lives.”

“Of course I’m so glad I’ve still got him, but I didn’t want him to be like this. We had such a wonderful life but this changes everything.

“We’ll have to move house. He can’t come back here when it happened outside his front door. We just have to be thankful he is starting to improve at last.”

On the night of the attack, on October 22, Mr Alder had been on his way home from a charity night at the Fat Pot club at 11.15pm, when a gang started shouting at him.

He tried to run from them but only managed to get as far as his driveway before he was assaulted.

A 34-year-old man is due to appear at Bradford Crown Court in connection with the alleged assault.