Dominic Choate, 15, lost his leg from the knee down three years ago and has been afraid to walk outside since, worried he’d be vulnerable to attack.
The Burbank teenager’s fears were realized this week when he and two friends were accosted outside his home by a group of young men who eventually used the boy’s prosthetic leg as a weapon.
It was six on three, the boys said, an unfair fight by any standard. Add in Choate’s disability, and police say it was downright mean.
The costly prosthetic broke at the socket during the melee, and Choate’s confidence was shaken again.
“I’m afraid just to walk out the door,” he said Thursday afternoon from his family’s living room.
Police Capt. Joseph Ford said Choate and his friends did not know the young men who attacked them but gave good descriptions. Police are following a number of leads, Ford said, adding that the men could be charged with aggravated battery and aggravated criminal damage to property: the prosthetic leg.
Ford said they’d had offers to replace the prosthesis, with one man offering to give the teen his spare prosthetic leg.
For now, Choate is hopping around his house and using a wheelchair when he’s tired. The attack has taken a toll on the rail-thin boy who has not been the same since the accident that cost him his lower left leg and foot.
Dominic Choate said he and two friends were playing basketball next to his home late Sunday night when a dark-colored car pulled onto the block, nearly hitting a child. Choate and his friend Mike Manley yelled at the driver for going too fast.
The car backed up and hit another friend, Kyle Keene, 19, on his left side, knocking him down but not seriously hurting him, the two said. Keene said he reached into the car to remove the keys from the ignition to stop the driver from hitting anyone else.
That’s when the fight started.
Six young men–believed by Choate and his friends to be in their late teens or early 20s–exited the car, and two of them approached Choate. He showed them his prosthetic leg, thinking they’d back off.
While he was spared, his friends were not. At one point, one of the young men took the limb and started beating Keene with it, eventually knocking him out.
“I was getting stomped,” said Keene, who had two black eyes. “I was bleeding all over. I thought I was dead.”
