Brian Steinhauer spoke from the heart about his struggle to recover from life-threatening injuries, praising his doctors and parents for nursing him back to health in his first public comments since a barroom assault put him into a coma last May.
"If anyone could have felt bad for themselves ... he could have been me," Steinhauer said after being greeted by a brief applause at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital.
"In the future I hope to inspire people fighting for those who fall through the cracks in the health care system," he later added. "Nothing is more important than restoring people's health."
The Brooklyn native went from being a carefree Binghamton University student to a beating victim who required a ventilator to breathe and a feeding tube to eat. He needed a walker to leave the hospital four months later and his speech is still not back to what it was before the incident.
Steinhauer could not recall the barroom attack and chose not to dwell on his lingering physical problems. Instead he spoke about the positive side of his situation and thanked doctors for helping him walk and talk again.
The 22-year-old expressed no ill will toward his attacker despite his severe injuries.
Steinhauer described himself as “a normal guy stuck in a bad situation who kept a positive attitude and kept my head held high.”
Steinhauer was assaulted in a bar near Binghamton University by former university basketball player Miladin Kovacevic. Kovacevic was arrested but jumped bail and fled to Serbia.
The Serbian government has paid Steinhauer's family $900,000 as part of a deal to prosecute Kovacevic. Kovacevic's lawyer has said his client doesn't believe he would receive a fair trial in the U.S.
