Couple describes attack near Roppolo’s

AUSTIN (KXAN) - He remembers the "terrible image" of seeing a group of strangers beating up his wife while he struggled to stand on a broken leg.

She recalls wondering if they planned to kill her husband, punching and stomping him as he lay helpless.

"I've never been able to make more sense of the saying, 'Wrong place at the wrong time,' he said. "And that was just us...I don’t know how else to say it."

The young couple, who have three children, described last month's attack in an exclusive interview.

 

A brutal, random attack

Because two of the four suspects are still out there, they asked that their faces and names not be used.

It's a frightening story of a brutal random attack, a swarm of men piling on a young couple as they tried to protect each other from the blows.

It was in the early morning hours on Saturday, Jan. 24, not long after midnight. The Austin couple was walking back to their car after a family member’s birthday in the popular downtown Warehouse District.

Their nightmare began when they passed a loud, rowdy group of people in line for the popular Roppolo’s Pizza trailer. Several were arguing, and then one of them turned on the couple.

"I remember approaching the crowd," he said. "We heard the argument (between men in line). … I remember looking back at him because he said something about, do I know who they are and if I was with him."

His wife pulled him to the side to try and get him out of the way, she said. Figuring that they wouldn’t do anything to her, she tried to calm things down as they moved away.

"I turned around and said, ‘Hey, we don’t know those guys. We’re just trying to walk to the car. Just be cool,'" the wife said. "He's just rushing me, and then he says, ‘What?’ in an ugly tone. And then he shoves me.”

Then he turned to take a swing at the husband, who was already rearing back to hit the guy who had just shoved his wife.

"He was pretty lit up on something," the husband said. "I’m not sure what it was."

Shielding each other from the attack

At that point, the attacker’s three friends came over and began beating up the couple. They pushed the man down concrete stairs that lead to the street.

"I remember hearing my leg snap when it folded behind me," he said. "I do have the terrible image of seeing those guys strike my wife like that, and I wasn’t able to do anything about it because my leg was broken. Every time I tried to get up, I would fall straight back to the ground."

Meanwhile, the wife remembers being hit in the face upwards of six times and knocked out.

"I was knocked out unconscious, every single time that he hit me and the other guy hit me," she said. "And I would wake up, and they were still punching me and kicking me in the head because I was down. .. It was literally half a second that you could think of anything, because they’re coming at you full force, and then they hit you and you’re knocked out."

He was on the ground, his hand shattered, his right leg broken in two places. When his wife was knocked out, he would put his hand on her to protect her and start kicking at his attackers with his good leg.

"I was thinking, what else do you want?" he said. "She’s knocked out on the ground, I’m here and can’t do anything. Why are you still here?"

His wife was wondering the same thing. What were they going to do?

"There was a point where I got up and saw him on the street, and he was just holding himself covering himself, and that’s all he could do, and they’re kicking, punching, stomping him, all four of them, and I’m just crying, 'Oh my gosh, what do they possibly want to do to him?'"

Severely beaten with her jaw broken, she gathered herself up and went towards her husband, pulling at him, yelling at his attackers.

"I was telling them, 'Leave him alone! What else do you guys want to do? He’s hurt! He can’t get up!'"

The dark side of the city

They knocked her out again. Then the husband saw the ambulance lights. He saw his attackers take off running.

Relief washed over him.

"My first thought was that, OK, I can rest now for a second," he said. "I hadn’t been that happy in a long time, seeing the EMS lights pull up and them run off."

Police have arrested two men and are looking for two more. The couple are so spooked by the attack that they’ve moved out of their rental home and into another, fearing that the attackers would find them.

A self-described “strong family,” they’re seeking counseling for the trauma.

“It’s the same feeling you would have if you saw someone strike your daughter,” the husband said. “It’s just an awful feeling, especially when you can’t do anything about it. I’m still going to sleep and waking up with that on my mind, feeling really bad about it that I wasn’t able to do much.”

And after 10 years in Austin, they now see a dark side to the city they love.

"It's scary, and I’m traumatized where I don’t do anything anymore,” she said. “And it got me thinking it’s not safe down there. … We go down to the Warehouse District because it’s a nice area. We just love going down there. The energy was always great. And that just made me think. My kids almost lost me and my husband.”