Attack on man left him with seizures

RACE-hate mob victim John Payne has spoken out for the first time this week after three of the 30 thugs who tried to beat John to death were jailed at the Old Bailey for a total of 54 years last Friday (Jan-11).John was attacked for what the court heard was "no other reason than he is white" when he ventured onto the mainly Asian Clichy housing estate in London's East End.

A friend desperately held his skull together as the baying mob reined blows down on him with a machete or axe and other weapons.It was the miracle that kept him alive which helped surgeons at the Royal London Hospital save him. John told the Advertiser how the attack on the estate in Stepney nearly two years ago has ruined his life."I won't be able to work in the near future," he said."I can't sleep and can't drive because of the epileptic seizures the attack has left me with."Nor can I just go to the pub with my friends or play football."I am frightened to pick up my baby daughter in case I have a seizure."They have ruined the rest of my life."

The 35-year-old now suffers regular seizures, walks on crutches because he can't move his right foot and is still having physiotherapy for his arms and legs. But there is some light at the end of the tunnel.John and his 29-year-old partner Corinne Smith, who have a one-year-old daughter Charlotte, are now expecting twins, a boy and a girl, in April. "I'm happy about having twins," he says."But I'm also sad because I can't do the things I would want to with my children.

"I won't be able to play football with my son and won't be able to carry them to bed because I now struggle to get up and down the stairs."John who worked as a site manager for Metronet in Canary Wharf, can't quite draw a line under what happened, even though three of his attackers, Sodrul Islam, 23, Mamoon Hussain, 20, and Delwar Hussain, 21, are each behind bars for the next 18 years.The thought that the rest of the 30-strong mob of racist thugs could still be walking the streets still haunts him and left John too frightened to go out on his own.

"I think justice has been done," he adds. "But the attacker who hit me over the head is still out there somewhere." He vows never to return to the Clichy estate, where he was walking with four friends after a night drinking at an East End pub that fateful night.