"It was a cold and calculated cheap shot," the policeman who was assaulted at Highpoint Shopping Centre on Boxing Day last year, told the County Court on Monday.

"You planned for it and finally you got your opportunity. You kicked me and then ran off like a coward. For all you knew I could've been lying on the ground unconscious with an unknown brain injury. But how would you know?"

The policeman was on all fours trying to arrest a 15-year-old boy suspected of shoplifting when a 17-year-old boy kicked the senior constable and bolted out of the centre.

The kick caused bruising and swelling around the policeman's left eye and, but for five millimetres, might have caused career-ending blindness.

Had that happened, it would likely have cut short another police career – that of the policeman's wife, also a senior constable, who was also on duty that day and who shook as she heard the incident unfold on police radio.