They didn't kill John Atkinson. But it wasn't for lack of trying.
Judging from the baseball-size bumps, the bleeding in his brain and tissue trauma, doctors believe the unsuspecting teen was hit in the head with wooden bats at least 10 times.
The beating was so brutal that 14 months later, Atkinson still cannot remember much of the incident. But his recollection begins with an unforgettable image:
``I remember being on the ground on my hands and knees and I remember looking up and seeing someone with a bat,'' he said at his family's home last week. ``I remember him raising the bat and swinging it down.''
Those who beat Atkinson hadn't satisfied their blood lust. Minutes later, they found someone shorter and smaller. Someone alone. On the steps of St. Cecilia's Catholic church, they found his childhood friend, Eddie Polec.
Soon, John Atkinson is scheduled to be there for Eddie - testifying in court against the six young men on trial for killing his friend - and leaving him to cope with the pain from that violent November night in 1994.
Prosecutors say what happened to Atkinson proves that what happened to Polec was no isolated outburst, provoked in the heat of the moment.
``This is the Eddie Polec that lived,'' said Assistant District Attorney Joseph Casey, who is trying the case. ``There could have been a second homicide that night.''
Atkinson's experience offers a glimpse into the agonizing aftermath of the tragedy from the victim who survived.
It has taken the strapping 6-foot-5 Fox Chase youth a year to recover from his injuries. It has taken just as long to mend the emotional wounds of that night - including the grief that for a while made living seem only marginally better than dying.
``Every time I wake up I think that Eddie should be waking up,'' he told classmates at Chestnut Hill Academy in a speech on violence a month after the Nov. 11, 1994 attack.
``Every time I go to school, I think that Eddie should be going to school. Everything I do that's normal, I just picture Eddie doing it and me in the casket. I picture my mother being helped out of the church and my father at my funeral.''
``I don't know how I'll end up after this is over, if it's ever over. I do know that Eddie is gone, and, for now, so am I.''
The night of the attack was unusually warm. It was Friday, which meant most local teens would end up at ``The Rec,'' the Fox Chase Recreation Center - a gym and surrounding outdoor park down the block from St. Cecilia's on Rhawn Street.
