The young man battered with a tire iron, a bat, and a black jack in a violent West Village brawl early this year took the stand today as he faced the thugs accused of viciously beating him within inches of his life.
Kevin McCarron, 24, choked up with emotion as he described the brutal beating last January that left him with permanent brain damage.
“I’m not as successful as I was before,” McCarron told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court. “”I’m always tired. I lose focus easier. Communication, I don’t know if it will ever be back where it used to be.”
Hatem Farsakh, Sherif Rizk and Mahmoud Habib are on trial for attempted murder for allegedly using the arsenal retrieved from the trunks of their cars to bludgeon McCarron and a group of pals.
McCarron of Andover, Mass. suffered a fractured skull in the Jan. 13 attack. After months of working with a neurological specialist he still struggles with memory lapses and comprehension difficulties, he testified.
When the former college athlete began to tear, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin asked “can we get this poor guy off the stand?”
The last memory McCarron has of that fateful night was having a few beers with college pals at the bar Off the Wagon.
A few hours later he was pummeled unconscious and left bloody and motionless on MacDougal Street.
Last week prosecutors showed jurors surveillance video of the two groups of men in the drunken melee. McCarron’s pals are seen fleeing as the attackers pursue them brandishing weapons.
The video pans out to show McCarron lying on his back in the middle of the street as the defendants flee in their cars.
Farsakh told police the fight began when a member of McCarron’s group used a racial slur aimed at their Arab background.