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A "tormented" dad starved himself to death after a brutal attack left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anorexic Ed Hallett plummeted from 22 to six stone - the weight of a 12-year-old child - after a road rage driver beat him round the head in front of his baby daughter.

The 41-year-old "never recovered" from the shocking assault which left him "a shadow of his former self".

After 18 months of terrifying flashbacks, a diet of energy drinks and obsessive 15-mile walks a day, Mr Hallett suffered organ failure and died.

"He was a skeleton," wife Claire said. "I had to tell the girls daddy couldn't fight anymore.

"The rugby player I married - the hunk who'd fathered my children - now weighed 6st 8lb."

(Image: Wales Online) (Image: Wales Online)

Ed was driving back from walking his dog Bonnie with his 18-month-old daughter Eira-Rose in October 2015 when an oncoming car swerved off the road.

Ed, a dad-of-two and a Good Samartian, stopped his vehicle and went to check the other driver.

He was then viciously attacked by thug Jason Maidment, 34, who beat him around the head.

A passing driver witnessed the attack and Maidment was later found guilty of ABH and motoring offences and sentenced to three years in prison.

(Image: Wales Online)

Ed did not recover from the psychological effects of being attacked by a stranger at random, his wife Claire said.

Before he died, he said: "I can still see the hatred on his face - like a madman."

Ed began to take long walks in the mountains near his home in Mid Glamorgan, Wales, and after cutting his daily food intake dramatically, quickly began losing weight.

According to Claire, the once healthy, cricket-loving dad refused to eat and lived on energy drinks.

(Image: Wales Online) (Image: Wales Online)

Eventually, under immense pressure from his family, Ed went to the doctor.

But by this time he weighed just 6st 8lb - the same as a child.

And in February 2017 he died in hospital after collapsing and suffering organ failure.

A coroner's inquest held in Aberdare last year heard Ed suffered from chronic anxiety and suspected PTSD in the months following the collision, including flashbacks to his daughter's face in the car at the time of the incident.

(Image: Facebook)

His father Tony said: "One of the big worries he had in his mind was his baby on a dangerous place locked in the car.

"He was very reluctant to leave far from the house and became very insular.

"It destroyed every bit of his confidence. The damage was done, after that he went downhill so fast.

"From then on he was terrified and lost a tremendous amount of weight. He went to a shadow of himself.

"It’s very, very tragic for the family and we feel if he went down a different road, this never would have happened."

(Image: Facebook)

This week, in a magazine interview, wife Claire said while the man who attacked her husband was free, her family had continued to suffer.

She said: "Ed was tormented by flashbacks.

"Round and round it went in his head - what might have happened to our baby girl.

"How I wish my husband hadn't stopped to help him. But that was the man Ed was.

"He could never have made sense of a man like Maidment."