Young Derry care worker who survived violent racist attack felt he was ‘staring death in the face’

The 28-year-old was subjected to a sustained assault in the Bond Street area after stopping to speak to his sister who was also assaulted.

The young care worker is currently recovering from a broken tibia at home.

He told the ‘Journal’ he has been unable to sleep and has been suffering from panic attacks since the shocking attack on Sunday.

"I was staring death in the face. It was a really traumatic experience,” he says, recounting being beaten with iron bars by his assailants.

After leaving work at 8pm on Sunday night he was going to visit friends to play video games when he bumped into his sister who he had not seen for a time in the vicinity of Dale’s Corner.

As the siblings chatted they were approached by a number of men who asked them where they were from.

“‘We also live in Derry here’,” he recalls replying, “and the next thing they said, ‘This is Londonderry you black c**t’.”

“I would have run away at that instant but I couldn't leave my sister. They were hitting her car with the metal rods. Someone was punching her from the window,” he recollects.

Shouting to his sister to drive off he found the attackers had blocked the entrance to Bond Street. It was at this point, with no means of escape, that he was viciously beaten.

“They were hitting me and I was trying to protect my head first. I was trying to struggle to get to the entrance where people could see me and come out to help but no one, everyone was just looking but no one came out to help,” he says.

At the height of his terrifying ordeal he feared his attackers were going to kill him.

"I was trying to escape and I felt a sharp hit on my knee. It turned out to be an iron rod. I was about to go to the floor but something in my mind was telling me 'don't fall down'. If I fell down there that was it. The way their voices were it was not just to injure me. It was to really, really, really make a statement out of me.

"I saw death flash through my face at that point. I was staring death in the face. It was a really traumatic experience,” he says.

Still shaken by the experience, he is now recovering at home but, he speaks of how his independence has been taken away and he can't go to his work, which he loves.

“I work in a care home. My work place is my happy place, taking care of people, seeing them in their down time, making them happy, seeing them laugh, making a fool out of myself just to make them laugh. It is something I feel is always my happy place,” he says.

A sister of both of the victims has been providing support as they have tried to come to terms with the events of Sunday.

She describes how the appalling attack unfolded.

“The guy was trying to open the door. [My sister] was trying to wind up the window because she had initially spoken to my brother and through the opening he punched her,” she relates.

Another individual was blocking the car as she tried to get away.

“There was a guy already in front who smashed the windshield. She was already screaming and particles of glass were in all the openings,” she adds.

The woman who was attacked is a care support worker in the community.

Her sister says she has been saddened by what happened and is trying to make sure her ‘children are in a good head space in terms of what has happened’.

“It is not your fault somebody came to beat you up or damage your property, you can't take responsibility for that. We have to speak up. It is you today. It is definitely going to be somebody else again tomorrow. But zero tolerance. It isn’t acceptable. You can't get away with things like this and they need to know they can't get away with things like this,” she says.

Her brother concurs.

“I feel in this century that shouldn't be happening any more. I don't even have to be a public servant to be treated with respect. It doesn't matter who I am. We are all humans at the end of the day.

"If I cut you and I cut myself. It is still the same red blood,” he says.