Imagine you are leaving your office for a lunch break one afternoon. You step outside and start walking down the street when all of a sudden someone you don’t know starts yelling at you. You keep walking in the hopes of avoiding a confrontation, but soon the person is running after you. They push you down and beat you up until a passerby jumps in to help. Aside from being concerned about your health, you are afraid — as anyone would be. Even after you have physically healed, you have lost a sense of safety in your own town and at your own workplace.
While this may seem like an unlikely scenario, it is exactly what happened to one woman just over a week ago at Cooper University Hospital across the river from Philadelphia. The woman, a nurse, was taking a break outside when another woman started yelling to her about disliking the medical industry. The woman then ran toward the nurse, punching her head and slamming her face against a brick wall. Fortunately, a pedestrian intervened and stopped the beating.
The attacker was arrested and has since been charged with aggravated assault. Police are continuing to investigate why the woman attacked the nurse. They did say that she complained about the medical industry.
A random and unprovoked attack can be extremely frightening for anyone to endure. While physical injuries can heal, emotional wounds don’t go away easily. Although nothing can completely erase the effects of a traumatic event like this one, some survivors of assault find that holding an attacker accountable through a civil lawsuit provides them some sense that the full amount of justice has been served.
Source: NBC 10 Philadelphia, “Mom Accused of Smashing Nurse’s Face Into Brick Wall,” David Chang, May 21, 2013