An Attack On A Good Man Goes Unnoticed - As Usual

I received a call early this morning from a contact at the ER over at Skyline. One of my clients had been brutally assaulted the previous evening while sitting on a bus bench, minding his own business, waiting for the bus. The attack occurred on Main street in East Nashville and my client never did get much of a look at the fecal smears who attacked him from behind like cowards, hitting him in the head and across the jaw with bottles, which broke on impact and impaled the man in the head and face. Witnesses said the attackers were a group of "youngsters" who were well known in the area for preying on the elderly and the homeless. The man who was assaulted is also well known, but for all the right reasons; he's kind, considerate, works every day and hasn't had any trouble in his life since the early 90s. He's clean and sober, 50+ years old and goes out of his way to help the less fortunate in the area. He was actually on his way to get some groceries for an invalid woman and her mentally ill daughter when the attack occurred. He's homeless because he doesn't earn enough regularly enough to afford housing, and since he's still got some self respect and pride, he refuses to take any government assistance for rent controlled housing, not that he could get it even if it was available. The reason I write all this is twofold: first, you would probably never even know this vicious attack occurred if I hadn't mentioned it here because for some reason, unless someone who is homeless is killed in an assault, it doesn't usually make the news, unless of course the person doing the attacking is homeless. The local news crews don't much care to report violence against the homeless, it seems. Cases in point: there have been something like 6 different deaths of homeless individuals who've been struck by vehicles over the previous 5 months or so, and as far as I can tell, not one word of it has been reported in the local newspapers or news broadcasts. Second, it's usually a pain in the ass for the homeless person who's been attacked to deal with the incident, since he/she doesn't have the resources necessary to follow up on the crime and make sure the perpetrators are brought to justice. It's also difficult for them to recuperate after being attacked, since they don't have any place to go and "lay up" for a few days while they recover. It's pretty hard to recuperate from anything while laying on a slab of concrete under and overpass, and its pretty rare they'll have anything to help them kill their pain, either, since most physicians are loathe to give narcotic painkillers to anyone who lists their address as "the street." I worked with the ER at Skyline to get my client into the Guest House and many thanks to Rob Nash, the new nurse over at the GH, as he was absolutely a joy to work with in finding my guy a bed. So my client has 48 hours to recover and that should do it for him, for now. Not sure what's going to happen to his job as it's going to be pretty hard for him to work for a few days. You may be reading more about him here in the near future.....