Exclusive:
21-year-old Bartosz Milewski fears going out after dark following brutal
attack
A student who
survived being stabbed in the neck with
a broken bottle has described how a gang of thugs attacked him and his friends
after hearing them speak Polish.
Bartosz
Milewski, 21, has been left unable to return to university or drive by injuries
inflicted in the brutal assault, which is being treated as a racially
aggravated hate crime by police.
He
had returned from teaching children at a US summer camp just days before
meeting up with friends to catch up on Thursday.
After
going to a local supermarket to buy drinks they sat in a park near his home in
Donnington, near Telford, to enjoy the warm weather.
Mr Milewski said they were talking quietly shortly
before 1am when they noticed a group of men approaching.
“They had almost
gone past but then they heard we were talking in Polish and they turned around,”
he told The Independent.
“They started swearing at us and asking why we were
talking in Polish, saying it’s not our country and we should go.
“One
of them said he had a daughter living round the corner and he didn’t want her
to hear us talking Polish.”
The
gang ordered Mr Milewski and his two friends to leave the park, becoming
increasingly aggressive.
“I
said: ‘We’ve been living here for a long time and there’s no reason to be like
that,” he added. “We were already leaving.
“But
one of the guys grabbed a bottle. He smashed it and said: ‘If you don’t go I
will stab you’.
“I
said he didn’t need to do that, we were going. He pushed me and I pushed him
back, then he stabbed me.”
At first Mr Milewski said he did not realise how
seriously he was wounded, with a gash in his neck that later needed 13 stitches
and could leave a scar.
Bleeding,
he started walking away towards a friend’s house but the gang continued their
assault, ripping planks of wood from a nearby fence to use as weapons.
As they started to give chase, Mr Milewski called
999 but struggled to relay his plea for help to emergency operators as he
started to lose consciousness.
“I
was trying to talk to them but I was losing so much blood, they couldn’t
understand me,” he said.
“Then
one of the men hit the back of my head with a piece of wood like it was a
baseball bat and I fell down.
“The
way they behaved was so aggressive - I think they must’ve been on drugs.”
The
attackers fled when they saw the approaching blue lights of an ambulance and
have not yet been traced by police.
Mr
Milewski was taken to the Princess Royal Hospital and discharged after being
given 13 stitches, but had to return the following day because of inflammation
around the wound.
He was planning to return to Portsmouth University,
where he is studying sports development, on Sunday but has been unable to leave
home because of his injuries.
The
gash in his neck is healing but causes Mr Milewski excruciating pain when he
attempts to turn his head, making it impossible to carry out his university
studies or work as a football coach.
“My
head is still swollen and hurts every morning when I wake up,” the student
said.
“I’m
worried some nerves might have been damaged because I’m having trouble fully
lifting my hand…I can’t do anything.”
Born
in Poland, he moved to England with his parents and younger sister in 2009 and
attended secondary school and a sixth form college in Shropshire before moving
to Portsmouth for university.
“I
was 14 when I left Poland and now I’m 21, England feels like home,” Mr Milewski
said, adding that he only ever remembers hearing “a couple” of discriminatory
comments before his attack.
“I
wasn’t in England for the Brexit, I don’t really know what changed. That was
the first time I had been out since coming back from America.
“Most
of the messages I got after the attack were from British friends saying they
were sorry but there’s always going to be one or two people around who are
mentally unwell.”
The
attack has changed daily life for the student and his family, at least in the
short term.
Courtesy: http://www.independent.co.uk/
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