If there is any way to garner more sympathy and further prove yourself an unfair victim for the monstrous college athlete who put you into a coma after a bar fight eleven months ago, it's ending your first press conference by tossing up the Vulcan salute. Today was the first public appearance by Bryan Steinhauer, the 22-year-old Brooklyn native who was brutally beaten by his Binghamton classmate Miladin Kovacevic, the Serbian basketball player nearly twice his size. The Daily News describes his words as "emerging slowly and heavily slurred," as seen in the video below from MyFoxNY.
Steinhauer's family recently received $900,000 from the Serbian government, after a drawn out process attempting to bring Kovacevic to justice after he fled to his homeland following his arrest for the attack. Steinhauer says he doesn't think about Kovacevic, who is currently awaiting trial in Serbia, and he doesn't recall the incident. He told reporters, "I think they want to see me angry. They won't get that. I have a poker face. I have a full house. So I'm not worried....Thankfully, I'm not full of hate."
Doctors said that Steinhauer had hemorrhages and contusions affecting almost every lobe of his brain when he arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital in the third month of his coma last July. He said, "I had a second birth and raising at Mount Sinai...I'm just a normal guy stuck in a bad situation who kept a positive attitude and kept my head held high."
Reporters at the press conference were impressed by Steinhauer's good humor throughout, particularly when asked what he did upon leaving the hospital and he responded that he went "looking for a job." While he is working towards being able to start an accounting job he had already accepted before the fight, he said, "In the future, I aim to inspire people to fight for those who fall through the cracks of our health care system. Nothing is more important than restoring people's health."
