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TOUGHER THAN THE NONGAYS WHO BEAT HIM UP!!
'I thought I died': Gay man Jack Price, beaten in Queens, talks about attack
Saturday, October 17th 2009, 4:00 AM
Daily News
Jack Price awoke from a medically induced coma at a Queens hospital, the victim of a hate crime beating.
Jack Price in this undated photo.
The
gay Queens man whose brutal beating was caught on tape spoke out for
the first time Friday, saying he didn't expect to survive the attack.
"I thought I died," Jack Price, 49, told the Daily News from his bed at New York Hospital Queens. "I was bleeding all over the place."
With tubes running into his chest and nose, the resilient Price insisted he wouldn't want anyone else to face a similar fate.
"Better
it was me," Price said in a pained voice, the stitches along his broken
jaw clearly visible. "Someone else may not have survived it."
The courageous College Point man spoke out more than a week after the attack.
The late-night Oct. 8 beatdown left Price with a shattered jaw, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
Daniel Rodriguez, 21, and pal Daniel Aleman,
26, the two goons cops say were captured on surveillance video
repeatedly punching, kicking and stomping on Price, have been charged
with felony assault as a hate crime.
The bruises on Price's face are healing, but his feelings toward Rodriguez and Aleman remain raw.
"I
hope they rot in jail," Price said. "I don't understand how someone can
do this to somebody. They almost killed another human being."
Price
said he was on his way home when Rodriguez and Aleman, both of whom he
recognized from the neighborhood, began taunting him.
Speaking in Spanish, the pair of thugs called Price a "stupid f-----" and "dumb f-----," he said.
"They didn't know I spoke Spanish," Price said.
He ducked into a bodega to grab cigarettes, but when he emerged, Rodriguez and Aleman confronted him again.
"I know where you live, f-----," one of the men said, Price recalled.
"You better run away before he kills you," the other said.
Moments later, the pair pounced.
Price said he doesn't remember much from the attack, only that he was surprised when he realized he was still alive.
"I took it pretty well," said Price, who's unsure when he'll be released from the hospital. "I still got home."
rschapiro@nydailynews.com