TROY — Two brothers wound up side-by-side in the emergency room early Saturday after each was beaten and robbed in separate incidents.
The brothers, a 29-year-old Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate and a 25-year-old Hudson Valley Community College student, live together in a Fifth Avenue apartment. Each was returning home from drinking at separate bars at separate times when they were attacked.
Both will have their jaws wired shut for six weeks as a result of the beatings, according to their father, who lives downstate in Walden where the family is from.
The 29-year-old was beaten in the Williams Street alley around 2 a.m. A neighbor saw the commotion and yelled, causing the attacker to flee, according to a police report.
The victim put up a fight and slammed his attacker into a car, his father said, causing a dent noted in a police report and a bang that alerted the neighbor.
The victim, who was knocked unconscious, said he had exchanged words with the attacker beforehand but did not recall what they discussed.
The suspect, described as a 6-foot tall black male weighing roughly 180 pounds, took $100 in cash from the victim’s pocket.
Two hours later, his brother, who works at a Latham insurance company, was walking to their residence when a man he did not know began talking to him at the corner of Fourth and Fulton streets. After walking together and talking, he told police the suspect pushed him to the ground and beat him, and two others joined in the attack.
After taking his wallet and his cell phone, the assailants managed to extract the PIN number to his ATM card from him, his father said.
“They just kept on beating him. They dragged him into an alley and kept on kicking him until he gave them his PIN number,” his father said. “He’s got a big horrible bloody bruise on his head, and he’s got a sneaker footprint on his nose. It’s still on his nose. You can see it.”
When he tried to get up, the suspects pushed him back down and fled, a police report said. Three transactions were later made at downtown ATMs, withdrawing a total of more than $750 from his account, his father said.
The primary attacker was described as a black male in his 20s, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 175 pounds, making him about a half-foot shorter than the man who attacked his brother.
The victim in the second incident was able to flag down a vehicle, the father said, who called 911.
The brothers ended up side-by-side in the emergency room at Samaritan Hospital for surgery on their jaws, the first time they became aware that the other was also attacked.
Their father said the pair plan on moving out of Troy. The HVCC student will move to Albany, while the RPI graduate is planning to move back to Walden, which is near Newburgh.
“They just want out for awhile,” the father said. “It’s a scary thing.”
It’s unclear if the attacks are related. The method used — starting up a conversation and, upon discovering the subject to be intoxicated, attacking and robbing him — is not an uncommon one, police said.
Dave Canfield can be reached at 270-1290 or by e-mail at dcanfield@troyrecord.com
No comments:
Post a Comment