One of the gang took a picture of the attack on Mr Henderson

John Henderson, 68, was approached by a gang of four boys and was punched in the chest by one of them, as they captured the assault on a mobile phone.

The retired lorry driver was eating an ice cream outside a shop in Union Street on Saturday at the time.

He said he was "shocked" and had never seen anything like it.

Mr Henderson, from Ellon, Aberdeenshire, was waiting for his wife and daughter outside a shop at the time of the incident.

One came across and punched me in the chest on the right-hand side and the other took a photo of it on his mobile phone John Henderson

"My wife had gone to buy a new phone and I decided to go and get an ice cream," he said.

"I got back outside the shop and was leaning against the wall minding my own business when these four boys came along with four girls behind them.

"One came across and punched me in the chest on the right-hand side and the other took a photo of it on his mobile phone.

"I was really in shock because all the years that I have been going to Aberdeen I have never seen anything like it."

Mr Henderson, his wife Brenda and their daughter Rachel later traced the group to a nearby shopping centre where they saw them looking at a mobile phone and laughing.

Confronted gang

They confronted them but the gang ran away. Grampian Police are now investigating the incident.

Mrs Henderson said: "When we saw the group after the attack, I went over and asked one them if he realised they had just assaulted a terminally-ill man but they just walked off."

"How would they have felt if that was their grandfather or great-grandfather - would they have thought it was funny then?"

Mr Henderson, who has cancer of the gullet, did not need medical treatment after the attack but has been left shaken.

Doctors told his family in January that chemotherapy and radiotherapy had not reduced the tumour in his oesophagus and there was nothing more they could do for him.