A man is still recovering after he was viciously beaten by two men with golf clubs on Friday night in Chicago’s River West neighborhood.
The attack was captured on surveillance footage, and Nick Christen says he feels lucky to be alive after the assault.
According to Christen, he was walking his dog when a car pulled past him and into a dead end.
“I knew something was up,” he said. “Before they jumped out, I started running. Before you know it, I feel a golf club hitting me from behind. There’s two guys running after me, cackling, laughing, saying how it’s so fun to beat down a random stranger.”
A surveillance camera captured the beating as it unfolded.
“They finally hit me in the head and fractured my skull,” Christen said. “At that point I’m just begging them to please stop. They kept laughing.”
Christen says he still isn’t sure what the attackers wanted.
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“They kept yelling ‘give me everything you got.’ I only had my dog,” he said. “’Give me everything you got,’ then they’d swing again.”
Christen said the beating only ended because a neighbor intervened.
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“I hear from above ‘stop or I’ll shoot,’” he said. “One of the neighbors came out and threatened them. It was very heroic.”
At this point, neighbors are banding together and calling for action.
“Chicago has a lot of issues, but you never think it will happen on your block,” Zack Ursini said. “Now the question is, what do you do? What are actions we can take to make neighborhoods safer?”
Christen says that his healing process is going to take quite some time, but he’s determined to recover.
“My head is the worst injury. I’m sore all over my body,” he said. “Mentally, I’m okay. I’m not gonna let these guys beat me.”
The suspects fled the scene in a black sedan, and remain at-large.
