I guess I'm being a little bit of a smart@ss with this title. I didn't see New Year's Eve in, and the 'bash' referred to is not actually a party, but rather that my youngest brother (35) was bashed on New Year's Eve. He rode his bicycle home from a mate's place and only a few houses from where his mate waved him off at the front gate, a couple of guys out the front of a house called out to him to stop. This was just after midnight. He stopped, they then punched him off his bike and beat him around the head while he lay on the ground. He remembers putting his arms up to try to protect his head and yelling for them to stop. He can't really remember how or why it stopped but from what his partner has said (she wasn't there), apparently someone said something like 'Hey you can't do that' and he remembers someone handing him his glasses.
He then RODE HOME and woke his partner to the news that he'd been assaulted. Katherine called an ambulance (because their children were home asleep so she couldn't drive him to the hospital) and the police. This was about 1am. The police came and John then went in the ambulance to hospital, returning home at about 5am with an eye starting to bruise up and stitches to two places on his face. We didn't see him that day as he stayed home to try to sleep. When we saw him the next day, his other eye had started to bruise also and the worst eye looked pretty shocking to be honest - a big ring of purple around the whole eye and when he rolled his eye to the side, the white part was all red.
I'm really hoping the fools get caught. John seems to have a philosophical approach to it in that he said it "doesn't matter because they will eventually get what's coming to them". I guess this is the karmic approach, however my way of thinking is that next time they try something like that, they might kill the person. My brother said he feels embarrassed that it happened. But to me, HE has absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. He's a tall guy but when you're pretty much sucker punched out of the blue and you're knocked off your bike... well it's not like he ever really stood a chance of defending himself. Unfortunately I assume the guys who attacked him, who SHOULD be embarrassed about their behaviour, probably couldn't care less.
The fact that they were only a few doors down from where John was, means hopefully they were at the party that was going on at that house and that someone can identify them and will be brave enough to speak up.
There's a big campaign in Australia along the lines of 'One punch can kill' and 'Real Heroes walk away', however the problem with that is, it doesn't account for idiots, and there will always be idiots out there.
My brother lives in a pretty sleep seaside town, he wasn't out partying at a club where you'd probably be more likely to find trouble, and yet trouble found him anyway.
I'm just thankful he is okay. The younger children have been told that John fell off his bike and hurt himself. However I did later tell Jack and Henry the truth. They know there are no excuses for that sort of behaviour, and were of course as shocked as I expected they would be. We did have a good discussion about it all though.
Ayla
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