A man who appeared on DIY SOS died after suffering with complications of a brain injury he sustained when he was brutally attacked by a group of football hooligans.
Beloved Cambridge United fan Simon Dobbin was left unable to walk or talk after his head was stamped on in the unprovoked 90-second attack in Southend in March 2015.
Simon - a dad-of-three - was ambushed on his way to Prittlewell station after a football game between Southend United and Cambridge United. The men, who had been scouting out potential "targets" spotted the group of Cambridge fans Simon was part of and launched the attack.
He was left permanently brain damaged by the assault where some of the men were said to have acted "like a pack of animals."
The attack had to be broken up by officers using pepper spray.
Simon tragically died suddenly at his home in Suffolk in October last year at the age of 48.
An inquest has found that Simon died as a result of complications "arising from hypoxic ischemic brain injury following an assault."
Essex area coroner Sean Horstead formally opened the inquest and then suspended it "at the request of Essex Constabulary."
The inquest will resume at the end of any "contemplated criminal proceedings."
On Wednesday, Essex Police said a post-mortem into Simon's death found a "casual link" with the sickening attack.
Acting Detective Superintendent Stephen Jennings, from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate said an investigation will now open "to see if we can directly and evidentially show who was responsible for his death."
Following the attack, nine men were guilty of violent disorder, three of conspiracy to commit violent disorder and one of assisting an offender.
Three of the men were jailed for five years for violent disorder. The offence carries a maximum term of five years in prison.
In February 2020, Simon's wife, Nicole, told the Mirror of her horror at learning that some of the men had already been released.
She said: "It feels like a slap in the face. They are monsters. They didn't give any consideration to what they were doing.
"They didn't care what impact they'd had on somebody else's life and now it's like 'I've done my time. I can forget about this, now move on.'
"We don't have that luxury. We have to continue to fight every day. They only served half of their sentence."
Nicole said at the time she had kept a telephone recording of Simon.
She said: "It's just him saying, 'Hello. Are you there? Hello?' and I've kept it all these years, because I can hear his voice. When I found out I still had it, I was like, 'Oh my god, at least I can hear his voice.' I wish I could have a conversation with him.
"It's the little things you take for granted but you don't realise until you lost somebody like that, that they're not there to do it for you. After he was attacked, the first spider in the house, I didn't have him to call, I had to deal with it myself and I hate spiders.
"Or if I'm feeling down in the dumps, I would normally go to Simon and he would always pick me up, but I've not got that anymore."
In January 2019, Nick Knowles and the DIY SOS team, along with hundreds of volunteers stepped in to transform the Dobbins' home to suit Simon's needs and to help Nicole as she had become his full-time carer.
The episode had the country in tears when it aired on the BBC.
The same year, Nicole launched a campaign to get a new law passed by government to give harsher punishments to people who commit violence crimes like Simon's attackers.
