A retired Navy officer needed 100 stitches for his injuries after he was brutally beaten and mugged while walking his dog in Philadelphia.
Scott Harris was walking his dog Nora late Saturday night when he was attacked by a suspect who is still on the run. His wallet with credit cards and his ID were stolen during the attack in the Brewerytown neighborhood of the “City of Brotherly Love.”
The attacker beat him and left him with a brain injury, broken teeth, and severe swelling and bruising in the face.
Harris said there was a “large party” going on across the street from where he was walking, and “in hindsight” he thinks he probably should have walked nearby.
“Next thing I remember I’m in the ER because I kind of blacked out after that,” Harris told Fox 29.
“The surgeon said he stopped counting at 100 stitches,” he said.
Many of the stitches were placed inside his mouth.
“I did a year in a war zone in Iraq, did two years in Ukraine, and would not have expected this to happen in my own neighborhood,” Harris said.
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Harris’ partner Joseph Hurchick told the local outlet he believes the attacker was connected with the large party going on nearby.
Surveillance footage showed three women helping Harris get home after the attack.
“They brought him back, otherwise I don’t know what would have happened,” Hurchick said. “We were on the stoop and he was just bleeding, I was on the phone with 911, I didn’t know where the blood was coming from, I didn’t know if he was stabbed.”
The two said they have previously complained to police about large crowds coming into the neighborhood and holding late night parties, but they say their complaints have not led to a change.
“This is what happens when something is not policed, it could have been worse,” Hurchick said. “It’s going to take a murder for this to stop.”
The two men say they have lived in the Brewerytown neighborhood for four years and used to think of the park across the street as a perk, but no longer.
“I want more of a police presence, or lock the park up at night,” Hurchick said. “Just patrol the neighborhood.”
Philadelphia has been battling a spike in retail and car thefts, although assaults and robberies are down this year. Murders are also down by a quarter this year to 264 murders so far this year in Philadelphia.
However, retail theft is up by a third to more than 11,700 thefts, and car thefts have spiked to double what they were last year with more than 16,600 car thefts, according to police data. Total property crime is up nearly a quarter to more than 52,600 incidents.
Meanwhile, the drug and homeless crisis is raging in Philadelphia.
In some areas like the Kensington neighborhood, homeless drug users inject themselves in broad daylight. A new drug, Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer called “tranq” on the street, has also flooded Philadelphia’s drug market. The new drug has complicated the emergency response since it does not respond to Narcan.