When Kyle Johns, 19, headed out on February 23 to party with a friend in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, he had no idea his night would end in the emergency room, getting staples in his scalp.
As he walked down China Town Mall in the early hours of Sunday morning, he was suddenly approached by Jazzmin Fry, a complete stranger out celebrating her 21st birthday.
In a video recorded by a bystander, Fry is seen approaching Johns, as he retreats and tries to get away from her.
"This girl was looking for a fight," Johns tells news.com.au. "Thankfully someone who was watching recorded the video so you can see clearly that we walked away.
"She pursued us. You can hear her shouting, 'Want my f***ing heel in your eyeball?'"
Fry then stabbed Johns in the head with her heel, leaving him bloodied and fearing for his life, before shouting: "Not so funny now, is it you c**t".
"I thought she was going to kill me," Johns says. "I was covered in bruises; my head, forehead and stomach."
Johns' mother, Susan Johns, was at home asleep when she got the call every parent dreads.
"Kyle's been attacked, he's laying on the ground in a pool of blood," said the voice on the other end of the phone.
Panicked, Ms Johns asked if her son was conscious and was told "barely". After agreeing to meet her son and his friend in the emergency room, Susan jumped in her car, completing the 45-minute trip to Royal Brisbane Hospital in 30 minutes.
"I was filled with fear," she says. "I kept thinking, 'Oh my god, my son is dead'. As I arrived a female ambulance office said, 'I need you to take a minute, it looks really bad … but he's OK. There's a lot of blood so just prepare yourself'.
"When I saw him my heart lurched. I couldn't even feel my legs. I'm a single mum; it's been just me and Kyle his whole life. We're very close, there's a special bond.
"He was a real mess. I just kept thinking, 'Who could do this to my child?' His hair was saturated and his shirt was covered in blood."
Emergency room doctors stapled Johns' scalp back together and he was allowed to return home with his mother.
Last week, Fry pleaded guilty to assault and a magistrate imposed a A$250 ($264) fine with no conviction recorded.
It's a result that has upset Johns, who feels like the punishment would have been far more severe if it was him who had attacked a woman.
"I was in a lot of pain but now that's healed I feel really let down with the justice system," he says. "The scales of justice certainly swung in the woman's favour — I didn't receive full justice.
"If this was the other way around — a man had attacked a woman — I'd be in jail. The system's a joke and I feel very let down."
His mum is similarly unimpressed with the punishment her son's attacker received.
"I brought my son up to know how important respecting women is — he was taught never to raise a hand to a woman," she says.
"He found himself in this situation where he needed to defend himself against a woman and he didn't know what to do.
"He said, 'Mum, if I'd have hit her I'd have been charged with assault. I'd be in jail'.
"I feel waves of relief that he's home and he's OK but also anger that she's got away with it — a $250 fine is ridiculous."
Ms Johns says her son, a first year law student, was doing really well with his studies but has now "lost all interest".
"He thinks the system is a joke," she says.
Fry was working as a real estate property manager before she was fired last week.
"It was a drunken act," she told Nine News. "It was my 21st birthday and it's not me. I don't know why I did that and I wasn't in the right mind frame."