The young man who suffered a weeks-long coma after he was punched in the head outside a bar has returned home. Doctors' hopes for 22-year-old James Foster were initially pretty dim, so they were surprised by his "miraculous" recovery.
Foster, a Puyallup, Wash. resident, has just completed weeks of rehabilitation therapy at the University of Washington Medical Center. He landed in the hospital in April, after he had been admiring the rims on Daman Lehman's car. When he paid compliment to the wheels, Lehman allegedly punched him in the head several times, causing Foster to fall and hit his head on the concrete and slip into a coma.
Witnesses said that as he left the scene of the assault, Lehman said, "I put people to sleep. That's what I do."
But Foster is asleep no longer, and against all odds, seems to be on the path to a full recovery.
His family had originally decided not to tell him about how he had sustained such massive head injuries, but Foster found out on his own, by looking on Facebook and Googling his own name.
"What I read, what happened — I was, like, 'No,'" he told KIRO-TV.
According to the Pierce County Superior Court's website, Lehman is scheduled to stand trial for first degree assault on Sept. 17, continued from his initial June 26 trial date.
Some discussion about Lehman popped up on reddit, mostly to portray him as a 'roided out scumbag. But several commenters warned against torch-bearing mob mentality, suggesting that people defer to the judgment of the court system.
Photo credit: kirotv.com