Oct 14, 2009 7:02 pm US/Eastern
Mexican Illegal Immigrant Badly Beaten In Brooklyn
Devastated Wife Asks For Witnesses To Come Forward; Woodhull Hospital Under Fire Over Initial Treatment
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
An illegal immigrant was fighting for his life Wednesday night.
Mario Vera was taking home a bag of groceries from a church food pantry when he was attacked by two or three men saying, "wetback, go home."
On Wednesday his wife made an emotional plea for witnesses to come forward.
She left her husband's bedside to beg the public for help, but a tidal wave of emotion overcame her.
She had started to say, help us. Help us find justice. And the pictures do not really tell the story. You cannot see in her husband. Mario Vera's face, the blood clots in his brain from the beating. You do not see the seizures that are coming more frequently. You cannot see that since being taken to Beth Israel. He does not recognize his wife and daughter.
"She's gone through a lot -- just for a bag of groceries," said Suleika Cabrera of the Institute for Puerto Rican & Hispanic Elderly.
In between the odd construction jobs Mario Vera has found to support his family, he took a bag of groceries on his bike and made his way across the Williamsburg Bridge to his home in Brooklyn on Sept. 23, groceries that he got from the food pantry in this church that is part of a loose network on the Lower East Side to help immigrants legal and illegal, like Mario Vera. The network includes the Institute for Puerto Rican & Hispanic Elderly, run by Cabrera, and also, Vision Urbano nearby.
When he got to Brooklyn, some young men knew enough Spanish to call him "Mojado!" "Hey, wetback!"
"Wetback! And then came the punches!" he wife reiterated.
All police have -- and shouting "Wetback!" has made this a bias crime -- is that he was beaten somewhere in a large area between the end of the bridge and his home in Bushwick. Scared at first to get help, because of his illegal status, it was two days before Vera went to Woodhull Hospital, where his family said he got a CT scan that showed nothing, and was sent home with two Tylenol. But six days later, Judith Ortiz, a social worker at the Institute, saw how bad he looked when he came for a flu shot -- and a doctor there from Beth Israel immediately took him to intensive care
Woodhull Hospital said privacy laws prevent them from commenting on charges by friends that it should have done more tests that might have revealed the damage to Vera's brain, sooner.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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