'Geezer' won't let thugs ruin his walks
By Stephanie Farr
Philadelphia Daily News
farrs@phillynews.com 215-854-4225
AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of "get the old geezer."
Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn't enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.
Shea was near the Valley Green Inn, on Forbidden Drive, in the Wissahickon Valley Park, about 1:15 p.m. Monday when he was hit from behind.
"I felt a real something to the head, a real blow to the head from behind," he said. "It knocked me to the ground; that was the biggie."
Shea said the four assailants continued to beat him for minutes while he was on the ground. He said they were black, appeared to be between 16 and 20, and three of them were wearing La Salle sweatshirts.
Police and Shea said that at least one of the attackers used a rock to hit him, causing deep cuts above his eyes. They all kicked and punched him while he was on the ground, conscious the entire time.
"There was only one I really saw well because he came back to kick me," Shea said. "The others spent a great deal of the time laughing."
The real "stunner" to Shea is that they left without trying to take his wallet, keys or cellphone.
"I think it was just to get the old geezer," Shea said. "They were some bad kids with rancid souls."
He tried to walk back to the Valley Green Inn alone, dripping with blood, but a bicyclist came to his aid.
Shea spent four hours at Chestnut Hill Hospital, getting stitches in his face - from his eyelid to his cheek - and treatment for two large scrapes on his leg and elbow. Shea also said two bones in his nose were broken.
The attackers have not yet been caught, police said yesterday. Despite that, Shea said he plans to be back out walking on Forbidden Drive next week.
"I hope to make myself do it," he said. "It's been a wonderful thing for me at my age."
[Thanks to reader-researcher "W."]
It always starts with the sucker punch, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteDavid In TN
Yeah. Even with an 84-year-old man! And I'm pretty sure that suckerpunch wasn't even a fist, but a rock. If the racist punk had used his hand, he might have broken it, and I doubt the vic would otherwise have reported the punch as being so powerful.
ReplyDeleteI’m also basing this judgment on the time I got slugged by a young black guy on the A train in March of 1997. He was only about 5’9, 5’10, and with a small build, yet when he hit me in the temple, he dropped me, and I even went out for about half a second, while going down onto the subway bench. As I was hitting the bench, I immediately reached for my weapon, and he backed off, before being escorted off the train to freedom in Brooklyn by a black male.
I was thinking to myself that the guy had a helluva punch. After all, I’d never been dropped before by a punch to the head or jaw, if I was standing up straight on solid ground, not even when I took a repeated pounding to the head from Rickey Booker, who was 6’2,” and a powerfully built 190 or so, when I was 16 and weighed a soft 130.
However, I did once get dropped and go out for a second or less when I was 18—from a blow to the temple by a thick wooden walking stick. (But I didn’t bleed. I’m not a bleeder. Heck, I didn’t even bleed when a black would-be mugger named Andre broke my nose on the A train in ’95. The only time I ever bled from a punch was when a racist psycho with the street name “Bo Diddley” hit me in the mouth when I was 16, in the same black nationalist youth program in which I encountered Rickey Booker. Hell, everyone bleeds from a punch in the mouth. That’s why they have mouth guards.)
I reported the attack to a white cop, who did nothing, and told me nothing as to the damage he saw, so that he could downgrade the crime to a misdemeanor.
When I got home, I saw caked, dried blood running down from my temple.
The reason the punch was so powerful was that it wasn’t a punch at all! He hit me with a metal object! I called the police, but they refused to upgrade the crime. I dealt with a hostile racist black female clerk, and a white supervisory officer who was no better. He insisted that I’d merely been slugged.
He wasn’t going to upgrade the crime, because admitting I’d been hit in the temple with a metal weapon would have made the crime a felony, and added a little discord to his carefully orchestrated crime stats.