Polish student tells of attack that left him brain damaged

HE is laughing – great belly laughs that rise up from his throat and echo around the room – but Patryk Mnich isn't really joking.

"I hate Edinburgh," he says, before roaring with laughter. Suddenly, more serio us, he adds softly: "I want to go home, back to Poland."

His pale blue eyes have a steely glare, and he constantly strokes his right hand with the fingers of his left as they rest on his lap.

His legs, once so strong that they carried him to second place in his town's annual 100m race and helped earn him a first-team role in attack with his high school's basketball squad, are propped up by the footrest of his wheelchair.

Eventually, someone will bring him a pair of elbow crutches and help him to slowly raise himself to his feet and shuffle awkwardly out of the room.

That he can manage even that is a remarkable feat. For two years ago, after two months in a deep coma and life-saving surgery following a vicious, drunken attack – his assailant hit him to the ground then stamped on his head – walking was something he could only hope he might do again.

Now for Patryk, each step, however small and shaky, takes him a tiny stage closer to returning home.

No wonder he now loathes the place he came to in search of a better life, only to end up imprisoned here by horrific brain injuries.

"I will go home. I want to get married, have children, get a job," he says. "I had a girlfriend in Poland before this happened. Because of this, it finished. It makes me very down.

"Of course I'm very sad, I'm a young man, I'm on my own – I'd like a girlfriend to love," he says, grinning mischievously, eyes suddenly twinkling.

"What I'd say to the person that did this . . . I'd say 'You stupid asshole, you tried to kill me . . . I'm in a wheelchair. Now you tell me why'."

The 25-year-old tries to imagine what he might have done to upset former Livingston goalkeeper turned professional gambler Craig Jamieson, 29, so much that he had to hit him to the ground and then cruelly stamp on his head.

He knows he'd been in Edinburgh for less than a month, sent by the construction firm he'd been working for in Manchester. He'd seized the chance to make some extra money to send to his sick mum Jidwiga, 49, and his student sister, Izabella, 25, back in Radom, 100km from Warsaw, and make some to buy a car and perhaps to stash away to start a business of his own back home.

"Bloody money, that's why I was here," he says, shaking his head.

But it was also a chance to make a fresh start. For in a chilling precursor to what he would endure, four years earlier Patryk's family was shattered by his father's sudden death – from a brain injury sustained after a late-night drunken attack.

"I was 17," he explains. "He was attacked and suffered a brain injury. He fell into a coma but he didn't survive.

"I became the head of the family. My mother took it bad, she had a breakdown and had to go to hospital. It was very difficult."

He arrived in Edinburgh around New Year 2007 to work at the former ERI hospital site in Lauriston Place, fitting double glazing to new homes within the Quartermile development.

It was hard, physical work, often 55 hours a week. Afterwards he'd let off steam with fellow Poles at the Boundary Bar in Leith Walk, a short stroll away from the flat he shared with three workmates at Pilrig Heights.

It was somewhere between the pub and his flat, along Pilrig Street, on 3 February, 2007, that Patryk was found staggering, face covered in blood.

"I came here and saw a lot of people drinking, there seemed to be a lot of it and it surprised me," he says, recalling his first impressions of Scottish culture. "I didn't think it would be like that, I thought this place was safe."

He continues: "I don't really know what happened. I was with my friends, then I was coming home by myself, this guy attacked me. Maybe it was to do with me being Polish, probably I was walking, singing Polish songs."

He adds: "I know I hate him. I wish he could see me like this, in a wheelchair.

"He was given seven and a half years in jail – he should have got 25 years. Look at me and what I have got."

Jamieson, with a previous conviction for assault and a drugs offence, lived at Pilrig Heights too. Like Patryk, sport featured in his youth, but he quit football to become a professional gambler.

He denied assaulting Patryk and attempting to murder him but was found guilty. An allegation that the offence was racially aggravated was deleted.

Sentencing Jamieson, Lord Clarke told him: "Your victim . . . faces a lifetime of very serious disablement. He no doubt came to this country to make a better life for himself and, indeed, to contribute to this country.

"You shattered any hope of that."

Today, Patryk sits in a room within brain injury support organisation Edinburgh Headway's base at the Astley Ainsley Hospital. His cropped hair reveals the large scar above his right ear, the result of emergency surgery in the wake of the attack to relieve a massive brain bleed.

When he woke after two months in a coma, he found his legs and his right arm paralysed. His younger brother Mariusz, 22, had arrived from Poland to be by his bedside. The drunken attack has altered the course of his life too – he now lives in Leith, and works in a factory while he waits to take his big brother home.

He faces a lengthy wait. Patryk spent a year in the Astley Ainslie Hospital regaining some strength in his legs and arm, defying excruciating pain and learning to walk, speak and eat by himself.

He is now the youngest resident by far at an Edinburgh nursing home where he is surrounded by elderly and frail residents, some of them suffering from dementia and other age-related conditions.

"It's all old people," he shrugs. "I can talk to them, but not like talking to my friends."

So his days are often spent at Headway's base, where he plays golf, bowls and boxing games on the Wii and pounds the treadmill, desperately trying to improve his walking ability so he can go home soon.

Next week he'll join the group's volunteers, staff, supporters and brain injured members on a fundraising crossing over the Forth Road Bridge to raise money for vital touchscreen computer equipment.

"I'm going to walk," he insists, as Rachel Fleming, an activity assistant with the organisation, warns he can't possibly cover the entire distance on foot even with a walking frame.

She lists the problems he's been left with: "Wheelchair dependent – he gets tired using the walking frame – short-term memory loss, difficulty filling in forms or completing everyday tasks, concentration problems, impatient, requires a lot of encouragement because he's lost a lot of confidence.

"And he can be a bit inappropriate," she adds, smiling while Patryk tries to caress her hand, raising it to his lips and trying to snatch a string of small kisses.

Patryk lets go, and, steely eyed, insists: "I will walk.

"And then," he adds, "I'll go back to Poland."

More than 30 people associated with Headway Edinburgh will take part in a fundraising walk over the Forth Road Bridge and back next Thursday (11 June) to raise money for computer equipment for their base at Astley Ainslie Hospital. To donate and for further information go to www.edinburghheadway.org.uk.

HELP AT HAND
HEAD injury as the result of an accident or, as in Patryk Mnich's case, linked to an assault, is the most common cause of sudden damage to the brain in adults.

Some may be left with very obvious signs of brain injuries, while others may suffer symptoms like short-term memory loss, epilepsy or sudden mood swings.

Support is available at Edinburgh Headway Group, based at Astley Ainslie Hospital.

The charity's facilities are open four days a week providing support, counselling, activities and social facilities for adults with brain injuries.