Erika Sherk
Northern News Services
Friday, March 16, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - A 35-year-old man assaulted and left bleeding on a downtown Yellowknife sidewalk in January has awoken from his coma.

His sister, who has stayed by his side since his beating, said he woke up at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton on Thursday, March 1.

He was flown back to Stanton Territorial hospital shortly afterwards.

Her name and that of her brother's have been withheld at the request of the family.

"My brother is in a lot of pain right now," she said. He is still very weak and can't talk very much, she said.

Though she is thrilled he is no longer in a coma, he is not out of the woods yet.

"Oh God, his injuries," she said.

He suffered a skull fracture in the Jan. 27 beating, she said, and has undergone two surgeries as well -- one for blood clots and one to insert a feeding tube.

It was horrible to see him when he first came into the hospital, she said.

"I couldn't even describe him," she said. "His head was so swollen, his eyes were black and blue, he just didn't look like my brother."

"He was barely hanging in there," she said. He had to have a tracheotomy, and battled a high temperature and high blood pressure.

A tracheotomy is a procedure in which a breathing tube is surgically inserted into the throat.

Now that he is awake, it's been hard for him emotionally, she said.

"He's okay, but sometimes he has to take stuff to calm him down because he gets overwhelmed," she said, especially when the pain is especially bad.

His memory is also a bit confused at times.

"He's not himself. Even he knows it," she said.

RCMP came to interview him after he woke up, she said, but her brother wasn't up to it yet.

"He's got to think about things for a while," she said, "I don't want him to get edgy."

The woman said she wanted people to know how her brother is doing. But it is also important that people do not forget what happened to him, she added.

"The guy that did this to him is still walking free. He left my brother to die," she said.

She wants the person who assaulted him to know that they are not going to let him get away scot-free.

"Because we haven't charged him yet, he must be laughing, he must think he's getting away with it," she said. "But he won't."

Her brother was found by two nurses around 2 a.m. after a night at the bar. Witnesses told RCMP that prior to the assault there had been an altercation between the victim and another man on the White Fox bar's dance floor.

The two men were swearing and trading insults, according to Const. Roxanne Dreilich.

White Fox bouncers made the two men leave.

The victim was found approximately half an hour later, unconscious and bleeding on the sidewalk outside the Red Apple restaurant on Franklin Avenue, according to police.

They have been speaking to one "person of interest," according to Cpl. Marc Coulombe, but no charges have been laid yet as they have not yet been able to interview the victim.

"The guys went last week but he wouldn't talk to us until he talked to a lawyer," said Coulombe. The lead investigator for the case is away, he added. The RCMP will interview the victim in hospital when he returns.

The victim's sister said her brother will be in hospital for at least a couple of weeks and will have to return to Edmonton for more tests at some point.