A teenager accused of participating in an attack that left a Warkworth father-of-four in a coma following an alleged argument over burnouts has appeared in court for the first time.

The 19-year-old Auckland resident latched his hands together as he stood in the dock at Auckland’s North Shore District Court before Judge Anna Fitzgibbon.

He was granted interim name suppression and ordered to return to court in January, at which point he is expected to enter a plea for a single charge of assault with intent to injure. If convicted of the charge, he could face up to three years’ prison.

Doctors decided to put Mark Maclean into an induced coma after he was taken to hospital with a brain injury on December 9. Emergency responders had been called to the intersection of Falls and Hudson Rds, Warkworth, at around 11.30pm after a report of an incident between a man and a group of people in vehicles.

Maclean’s wife, Dereda Lipsey-Maclean, earlier told the Herald her husband had been in a verbal and physical fight with someone that night after street racers started doing burnouts outside their home. All the cars in the area left and she told her husband to go for a walk to cool off after the dispute.

Soon after, she said, one of her children began screaming.

“I went out there to find my teenage boy holding Mark’s head in his arms,” she said.

She said her husband - an avid surfer, DJ and roofer - could walk after the alleged attack but he couldn’t talk.

He remains in hospital in critical but stable condition, police said in a statement last night announcing the 19-year-old’s arrest.

But there has been some uplifting news this week about Maclean’s health that his family has described as a “Christmas miracle”.

• Warkworth assault victim's wife has sympathy for alleged attacker
• 'He won't be home for Christmas': Father in coma after brutal attack by drag racers
• Father's critical injuries after confronting street racers: 21yo man arrested
• 'Christmas miracle': Critically injured man wakes from coma, can blink and squeeze hands

Medical staff yesterday took him out of sedation and he is now blinking and squeezing hands on command, his wife said.

Mark Maclean and his wife Dereda Lispey-Maclean. Photo / Supplied

“I am just so happy right now, I can’t stop smiling,” she told the Herald yesterday.

A Givealittle page has raised over $42,000 for Maclean’s family “to take some of the financial pressures off ... while they deal with the tough road ahead”.