Family: Elderly Detroit man dying after hate crime [View All]

[meegbear]

A 72-year-old Detroit man attacked outside his apartment building 10 days ago and left paralyzed from the neck down is clinging to life at an area hospital in what his family has called a hate crime.

Andrew Anthos was on a city bus on his way home to the Windsor Tower apartments on Antietam in Detroit around 7 p.m. Feb. 13 when a man approached him and asked him if he was gay, Anthos' family said he told police before he slipped into a coma. The man, who continued to harass Anthos and called him derogatory names, followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and attacked him with a metal pipe, striking him from behind, police said. The attacker left him on the snowy sidewalk.

Anthos was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where doctors performed emergency spinal surgery but were unable to reverse the paralysis. He is now in a coma and not expected to live past the weekend, his family said.

"There's nothing else they can do but keep him comfortable," said his niece, Athena Fedenis, 45. "He wasn't robbed. It strictly was a hate crime. This monster gave Andrew a slow, painful death."

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http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070223/UPDATE/702230439