Melbourne: An international student was allegedly assaulted and racially abused in Melbourne’s Chapel Street in inner suburb of South Yarra.
According to ‘The Age’, the 27-year-old youth hailing from Box Hill, on the condition of anonymity, said he was confronted by three men and two women on July 8 evening while walking back from work with a friend.
The victim, who did not want to disclose his nationality, said the attackers swore and racially abused the pair before surrounding them. The accounting student has been living in Australia for three-and-a-half years.
He said the group had pointed at him and his friend while they were in a 7/11 store moments before the attack. “Then me and one of my friends said ‘Let us go, we don’t want to have fight’,” the victim was quoted. “I was like begging them to let us go,” he said adding “All of sudden the guy punched me and kept continuing punching. I fell over and one of them booted and bottled me as well,” he said.
The group continued to kick and punch the victim while he was lying defenceless on the ground. The punch broke the student’s jaw and the bottle fractured his cheekbone, requiring three days in hospital, the victim said.
The student said he was still recovering from a surgery done to insert three plates in his face to fix the damage from the attack.
Two women, one of them a nurse, came to the aid of the pair. The report quoted a police official Edward Keon-Cohen saying that it was an unprovoked attack and was completely unacceptable.
“They were minding their own business, just walking along the street and for no reason they were just king hit,” the officer said. (PTI)