A GREAT-GRANDFATHER has told of his shock after being bashed during a terrifying daylight attack at Carousel Shopping Centre yesterday.

Maddington 71-year-old Richard Tredwell and his wife Diane had stepped outside the food court to smoke about 3.30pm when one of a group of about eight teenagers asked him for a cigarette.

When the couple refused, the boys attacked.

“One of them came back and said to me ‘you're a racist’, I said ‘I didn't say that’ and one of them came up and said ‘I'm gonna bash you,” Mr Tredwell told Today Tonight reporter Mark Gibson.

“They just bashed and bashed me in the face, he knew where to hit me, he broke my glasses and my teeth, terrible.”

"When I got the first sock in the jaw I thought he'd just walk off but no, he kept at me and after a while, well very shortly I was on my back and as I said he punched me with a lot of power and he knew where to hit me and how to hurt me, he meant business."

Mrs Tredwell fought off the attackers who she said hit her in the arm and tried to snatch her bags and phone.

She said the teens left empty-handed after she refused to give them her shopping.

“Why should you? We worked all our lives for everything, why just when they come up and say give me this, give me that?” she said.

Mr Tredwell, who works at St John of God Hospital, was taken there as a patient with a fractured nose, two black eyes, a gash to the chin and missing teeth.