With each beat of his heart, Nicholas Pellegrino, 29, had the impression of being another pump closer to death.
The professor of religion and Spanish at the secondary school of the Archbishop Riordan in San Francisco was at the Milanese station of San Donato in Milan, Italy, and he was bleeding.
It was just before noon on July 15, and Pellegrino was supposed to be on a two-hour train heading south-east to Florence, but rather seized hope that an ambulance would arrive in time to save him. Photos taken from him on the station’s ground have shown his chest and her shorts soaked in blood.
After 15 minutes, paramedical paramedics arrived and precipitated the State island, NY, from a local hospital, where he survived in a way as brutally cut in the throat.
The authorities say that the attack was led by a group of North African migrants. Now, more than a week far from what he described as a “barbarism in the Islamic State,” confirmed Pellegrino at times when he had recovered enough to return to New York on Thursday.
“Miracles still occur,” said Pellegrino, a professed Catholic, during a telephone interview on Wednesday evening. “I am grateful to be alive.”
Nicholas Pellegrino, on the right, with athletics athletes at Mgr Farrell high school in New York. Former students led efforts to collect funds after Pellegrino was attacked in Italy.
(Find McCole)
The train journey was supposed to be a small blip in Pellegrino’s day. He left a set of friends in northern Italy to join another in Tuscany on what was Italian holidays before the start of the fall semester.
A few minutes after embarking on the train, Pellegrino said he was watched by four men sitting about 10 rows from him.
When he lowered his head, we hit his jugular vein with a pocket knife while another stole his laptop, clothes and passport, according to Pellegrino.
A golden cross was also violently suspended around Pellegrino’s neck.
The “thugs were not afraid of me,” said Pellegrino. “They were armed with indicators and intended to kill me.”
Pellegrino thought he would die while he was hanging out from the train and towards a nearby platform.
The attack occurred around 11:30 am, according to the authorities. Pellegrino went up on the train in a previous station.
He said he was thinking of two things in the moments after the attack.
“R, I was looking around to see where the suspects were just to make sure they wouldn’t come to finish me,” he said. “And then, b, I felt the blood literally pump from me every beat and just hoped that the ambulance would arrive on time.”
Pellegrino was transported urgently to a neighboring hospital, where he received emergency care to stabilize the injury, according to Italian media. He was then transferred to an intensive care unit, where he received nine points.
He had been hospitalized from July 15 to Sunday, then stayed with a friend until his flight in the United States
The Italian newspaper Milano reported today that two 21 -year -old men had been detained by police suspected of aggravated theft.
Pellegrino said he testified in court on Wednesday and that the couple was now faced with more serious accusations of premeditated homicide attempt.
He said that the authorities had found his golden cross and his chain inside one of the suspect’s intestinal tracks.
The two were from Tunisia and are part of a gang, according to Milano today.
“Police told me that I was the seventh victim they attacked during a 48 -hour section,” said Pellegrino. “It’s crazy things; it’s something of a film.”
Although the alleged authors fled the train platform, they were identified by video surveillance images, according to Milano today.
The two men were arrested while trying to climb a bus carrying a switchblade and a stolen pendant, the media reported.
Pellegrino said two other suspects took care at the time of his attack were also arrested.
The Italian authorities did not respond to a Times call, and no one in the American consulate in Milan.
His passport is still not recovered, Pellegrino confirmed that he had obtained a temporary passport to go home.
“I was told that these guys had already served six months on various other small flights,” said Pellegrino. “They are bad people with a bad intention.”
Before working at San Francisco High School, Pellegrino was a teacher and track trainer at Mgr Farrell high school in Staten Island, NY, one of his friends and former students, Finn McCole, set up a gofundme With other former Pellegrino students.
“We are setting up this gofundme to help Nick pay all the medical expenses incurred during his hospital stay and to replace his lost value objects,” McCole wrote on the page.
“Finn is a great guy and a former athlete student and we are still friends,” said Pellegrino. “I am surprised by this amount of money, and it shows that even if teaching is ungrateful work, students want and grateful for a model.”
