When I look back on it now what surprises me is how disarmingly polite my attackers were.
"What are you doing?" asked one of the two, seemingly inquisitive, Asian teenagers who approached me on a quiet cul-de-sac in Bow, east London, shortly after 1pm yesterday.
"There's been a photographer around here, do you know her?" he added.
I didn't, but I explained I was a journalist for The Independent looking to speak to a man at an address in the area, who was standing as a candidate in the local elections, about allegations of postal vote fraud. "Can we see your note pad," the boy asked.
I declined and then the first punch came – landing straight on my nose, sending blood and tears streaming down my face. Then another. Then another.
I tried to protect myself but a fresh crop of attackers – I guess between four and six – joined in. As they knocked me to the ground one of them brought a traffic cone repeatedly down on the back of my head.
As their fists and feet slammed into me, all I could think about was some advice a friend had given me. She's a paramedic and has dealt with countless victims of assault. "Whatever you do don't get knocked to the ground," she once said. "Blows on the floor are much more dangerous." It seemed faintly absurd now. "That's easy for you to say," I thought. "How on earth are you meant to stay up?"
I don't know how long it lasted – it was probably only a minute – but it was a long minute. I don't remember them saying anything as they did it. The first noise I was aware of was the beeping of a car horn and a woman screaming.
The noise brought a man out of a nearby block of flats. With little regard for his own safety he waded in and defended me until my attackers ran away.
I shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't been brave enough to take action and I cannot thank him enough for what he did. He gave me a bottle of water to wash the blood away and showed me a mobile phone that one of the attackers had dropped which he later handed to the police. He also maintained that he saw at least two of the attackers run into the candidate's house.
What brought me to Bow yesterday were allegations of widespread postal voting fraud. Both the local Conservative and Respect parties in Tower Hamlets have been looking through the new electoral rolls for properties that have an alarmingly high number of adults registered to one address. The area has a large Bengali population and this type of fraud is unfortunately all too common. In some instances there have been as many as 20 Bengali names supposedly living in two or three-bedroom flats. When journalists have previously called, all too often there are far fewer living there. In some instances, no Bengalis at all.
A young father was slashed across the face as his five-year-old son looked on in what claimed was a random 'anti-white' revenge attack sparked by the murder of an Asian teenager.
Reece Johnson told how he and his son, Tyrel, were walking with Mr Johnson's girlfriend when a mob of 20 Asian youths surrounded him.
He claims one of the youths said, 'Your lot killed one of ours', before he was set upon.
The attack ended when one of the gang sliced open his left cheek with a craft knife. As Tyrel screamed in horror, his father was left reeling with a giant gaping wound in his face which later needed 68 stitches.
Police are investigating whether the attack was sparked by the murder of student Saffer Khan, 19, by two white youths in the same area more than two years ago.
Mr Johnson, a labourer from Great Lever, near Bolton, today said: 'My face is a mess but the fact is I'm very lucky to be alive.
'The doctors told me if the blade had continued another few millimetres then it would have hit my jugular vein. The nurse said it must have been a very sharp blade, like a razor.
'She said another finger tip across my neck and that would have been it, I would have died. These guys picked on me for no other reason than because I was a white and killers of that young lad were white.
'It's just unbelievable. Obviously I had nothing to do with what happened to Mr Khan yet I was tarred with the same brush as the killers simply because of the colour of my skin.
'I'm scarred for life now and people might look at me and think I?m a violent thug.'
Mr Johnson had been for a day out with the friends in Blackpool and was walking past the entrance of Bobby Heywood Park in Great Lever where Mr Khan was beaten to death by two teenagers in November 2007.
Mr Johnson said: 'I was with my son and a girlfriend when this mob of 20 Asian youths came up to us. They were saying "Your lot killed one of ours" - meaning white people killed an Asian lad.
'One of the guys was acting aggressively and the group was swearing and hurling racist abuse. They attacked me because of the colour of my skin. They were very racist.
'I saw one of them in front of me with a small hand knife and I was watching him. But then another lad came at the side of me and punched me and that's when I was slashed.
'I was scared for my life. The lads who attacked me have no respect. My little son was with me - he's five years old and he was traumatised.
'He was screaming, clinging on to one of my friend's legs.'
A 35-year-old Canadian who uses a wheelchair was beaten in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday and is in hospital in serious condition, according to police reports.
Heath Proden is from Manitoba but has been in Sydney since November on an extended visit with his girlfriend
He was waiting to catch a train at a city station at about 11 p.m. local time when he was approached and verbally attacked by two teenage boys, the New South Wales police said on their website. The physical attack that followed was recorded by security cameras at the station.
Police have charged two teenagers, aged 15 and 16, with armed robbery and attempt to cause bodily harm. Both have been denied bail.
After being confronted by the teens, Proden tried to leave the station via an elevator but was punched in the face by one of the boys and knocked from his chair, police said.
"I know he was quite intimidated and the only way for him to escape was by the lift, which unfortunately was where they trapped him and beat him," his girlfriend, Kristin Sharrock, told CBC News.
The teenagers allegedly then stomped on Proden and hit him on the head and body with metal bars, including one from his wheelchair.
The teens ran away with Proden's belongings and wheelchair, police said, but returned later — and repeatedly — to resume beating him.
Proden remains in a hospital northeast of Sydney, where he was being prepared for surgery on Thursday morning to treat severe cuts on his head and a depression in his skull.
"Fortunately, there's no injuries other than a compressed fracture of the skull," Sharrock said. "All his neurological exams have come back good, thank goodness.
"All the bruises are starting to appear now, so now pretty much his whole arms and torso are just black and blue from where he defended himself."
Sharrock said Proden was "awake and lucid and doing quite well under the circumstances, but he's "distraught, obviously, and very upset, and just can't believe that it's happened."
She said Proden went to a pub to listen to Doc Walker, a Canadian country music band that was playing in the city. He was on his way home when the beating happened.
He grew up with members of the band in Portage la Prairie, Man., located about 70 kilometres west of Winnipeg, but now lives in Winnipeg Beach, a town about 65 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
"He's a kind, generous, strong individual," Sharrock said, fighting back tears. "He doesn't deserve what's happened to him."
Proden's mother, Shellan, who also lives in Winnipeg Beach, said she was sick to her stomach when Sharrock told her about the attack.
"I just want him home," she said. "I just want him home and safe. I just want to see him."
Shellan has not been able to watch the video of the beating, which is being played on news broadcasts around the world. Every time it comes on, she has to leave the room.
"It's sick, sick," she said, stopping to cry. "These tears have been over and over and over."
Proden's grandmother, Vivian Proden, said he has used a wheelchair since breaking his back in a snowmobile accident in 2000.
"This boy has had a devastating life," she said. "He's a paraplegic. He's had a difficult time dealing with life and now this trip to Australia to visit his girlfriend was a highlight of his life, a happy part of his life for the first time, and now this happens. It's not fair, not fair at all." ...
The incident "appears to be a random act" and police have not determined a motive, police spokeswoman Joanne Elliott told CBC News. She said she'd never heard of an assault like this one.
"And I know that very, very experienced police who have worked in Sydney's western suburbs for 20 years … were absolutely appalled by what happened."
But according to freelance reporter Tim Stackpool, many in the community — about an hour's drive west of Sydney's famed beaches — say this type of beating "was destined to happen."
"The crime rate there has been going up and up and up and up," Stackpool told CBC News. "The police have been doing their utmost to keep it under control, but this is a place in Sydney where perhaps there is not a lot for the youth of the streets to … do.
"It is a cheaper area to buy property in Sydney, and some young families and young couples are moving in there now. But of course, over many years, some undesirable elements have crept into that community and unfortunately, 11 o’clock at night on that railway station where the victim was is perhaps not the place to be."
Wheelchair-bound Heath Proden is “recovering comfortably and nicely” from a partially crushed skull suffered in an assault in Australia, says the victim’s father.
John Proden said Heath — a resident of Winnipeg Beach — underwent skull surgery that took a couple of hours longer than expected at a Sydney-area hospital, but without complications.
“Everything was good — the surgery went totally great,” Proden said from his home in Portage la Prairie.
Though he didn’t have details, John Proden said he’s assuming the surgery ran longer than anticipated “because this has attracted so much attention, and they just wanted to do the best possible job” during the operation.
Shellan Proden, the 35-year-old’s mother, said he is “fine now” after Wednesday night’s surgery to repair the collapsed section of his skull.
“They went in and cleaned the fragments up, and brought this piece back up,” Shellan said, adding she spoke by telephone to Heath and his girlfriend, Kristin Sharrock, after the operation.
“He knew everything, he was coherent. He knew who he is.”
The family of one of the teenage suspects in the severe beating of a disabled Manitoba man in Australia has blamed the victim for allegedly provoking the boys charged in the incident.
A sister of the 15-year-old youth in custody in the Sydney area spoke up for her brother on an Australian radio station Thursday, claiming wheelchair-bound Heath Proden, 35, started the dispute late Tuesday night at a railway station just west of the city.
The sister suggested New South Wales police, who investigated and arrested the boys, haven’t publicly released parts of security video that show how the incident began before Proden — a resident of Winnipeg Beach — was beaten, in part with metal parts pulled from his wheelchair.
“(The police) didn’t show the bit of the video recording where he punched my brother in the face twice before that happened,” the sister said of Proden, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “He’s a really good bloke. He does anything his family tells him, this is something he wouldn’t do.”
John Proden, father of the man who remains at a Sydney hospital following what his family says was successful surgery for a severely fractured skull, slammed the claim as ludicrous.
“I don’t see what sense it would make for a guy in a wheelchair to provoke a group of youths,” Proden said from his home in Portage la Prairie.
“Secondly, is that the justification they’re using for having beat my son to near death? If that’s their best defence, they have no defence.”
Police have said they suspect the attack, allegedly by the 15-year-old and another boy, aged 16, was unprovoked.
WINNIPEG - The grandmother of a disabled Winnipeg man who was assaulted in Australia wants the two thugs who allegedly beat him to be brought to justice.
Vivian Proden said her grandson, 35-year-old Heath Proden, was to undergo surgery on his skull after being attacked in his wheelchair at a train station Tuesday night just outside Sydney.
“His skull is fractured by the terrible assault,” Vivian Proden, 78, said from her home near Portage la Prairie, “It’s deplorable. It’s all over the world like that, though, isn’t it? Are you safe anywhere?” she said of the attack, which was carried out, in part, with pieces from the man’s wheelchair. “I’d like to see them sentenced to the top ... instead of slapping their hands and letting them go in a month or two. The sentence should be severe.” Vivian is hopeful her grandson will recover.
She is right, it is "all over the world". So how do we stop this sort of violence happening?
When I look back on it now what surprises me is how disarmingly polite my attackers were.
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