A SPECIAL fundraising event is being held in aid of the family of David Morton Thomas who sustained a serious head injury in an attack earlier this year.

Mr Morton, from Johnstown, a shop floor technician at Morgan Electro Ceramics in Ruabon, has been in medical care since the assault which took place in Chester in March.

Staff members at the company are now planning a five-kilometre fancy dress run in the Ruabon area on November 12. The joint organisers are health and safety co-ordinator Terry Edwards and Sarah Hill, business unit planner.

Mr Edwards said that Mr Morton, 38, is hugely popular and colleagues wanted to help as much as they could.

“He has been working here for years and has got a lot of very good friends. We have all been deeply shocked by what has happened.

“We have organised collections for the family in the past and are now setting up this fun run. The company is donating prizes and it will be in fancy dress.

“The Moreton Inn is kindly providing sandwiches for runners afterwards.”

Last month the Leader reported that a law chief had refused to review the sentence imposed on the man responsible for attacking Mr Morton.

Alan Junior Gilmartin, 30, was on licence when he carried out the assault at the Temple Bar in Frodsham Street, Chester.

At a sentencing hearing at Chester Crown Court Gilmartin was jailed for two-and-a-half years for the attack by Judge Nicholas Woodward.

The court was told Gilmartin, of Sycamore Drive, Lache, had a record dating back to 1995, including previous convictions for burglary and a number of violent offences.

He was convicted of burglary in 2006 and in 2009 he was sent to prison for a year for assault.

Clwyd South MP Susan Elan Jones branded the sentence a disgrace and wrote to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke demanding a top-level probe of the case.

In response she received a letter from Attorney General Dominic Grieve MP who wrote: “I have the power, under Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, to refer to the Court of Appeal a sentence which appears to me to be an unduly lenient sentence.

“Alan Gilmartin pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm under Section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act.

“This is not one of the offences to which the scheme applies and there is therefore no possibility that I can seek to refer the sentence to the Court of Appeal for review.”