Senior hospitalized 4 weeks after daylight beating at Cheapside and Adelaide
CBC
A London senior said he's traumatized and afraid to shop in his neighbourhood after a daylight assault steps away from one of London's busiest streets put him in hospital for a month.
"To be so bold, at 4:30 in the afternoon and do that to an old man, that's ridiculous," said Gordon Johnston, 67.
Johnston said he was jumped by two boys, both about 16 years old, as he walked on the sidewalk on Adelaide near the Metro grocery store on the afternoon of June 1 just north of Cheapside Street.
Johnston said one of the young men jumped out from behind some shrubbery that was part of the outdoor garden centre in the store's parking lot.
One of the men confronted him while a second young man swung behind Johnston and pulled him to the ground.
"They started putting the boots to me," said Johnston, a frail man about five feet tall. He recalls being kicked and punched multiple times while on the ground but says he can only remember the first few seconds of the assault before he lost consciousness.
"The next thing I knew I woke up, police were there, ambulance was there but I didn't know what happened," he said.
Johnston suffered extensive injuries in the attack. He was admitted to University Hospital where he spent four weeks recovering from a broken arm and a separated shoulder.
A video he took in hospital and shared with CBC News shows extensive bruising on his arms, chest, legs and lower back.
"The bruising was from the top of my body almost down to my knees," he said. "It was horrible."
The London Police Service told CBC News they are investigating the assault but so far there have been no charges. Johnston said this week police contacted him by email for more information about the assault.
Johnston believes the origins of the June 1 attack happened on April 20, after he got into a verbal altercation with a young woman a short distance away at the bus stop outside the Shopper's Drug Mart near Adelaide Street North and Huron Street.
"She looked very drugged out and I just made the comment, to myself really, that it's too bad that these individuals get hooked on drugs and make a mess of their lives," he said.
Johnston said the woman became enraged and threw a tomato at him.