|
||||||||||||
|
|
Minneapolis restaurant owner recovering after violent attack
For nearly 20 years Thom Pham has been on the scene in the Twin Cities restaurant business. He's gained a sort of local celebrity status as the owner of Than-Do, Temple, and Azia restaurants. He's also known as a hard working man and it was while working Tuesday morning that he was attacked. He was in the parking lot adjacent to Azia when he says he was jumped by six to eight men. "One guy pull out a stick, a wooden stick, this big and smack me right in the head," Pham said hold his hands wide. Pham says at that point he fell down in the parking lot and then scrambled up to try and run away. "I tried to run onto Nicollet Avenue to get into light and traffic moving around and then the guys, they blocked that way of escape," Pham recalled. He said then he turned back and ran into the alley behind Nicollet, between 26th and 25th street. The attackers gave chase, "They had bricks and stones in their hands," Pham said. He says the men caught up to him and tackled him again, dropping the brick on the right side of his face. "Basically this whole side is numb," Pham said. Pham says he got away a third time and ran into a parking lot at 25th and Nicollet. He says the men were then scared off by a passing car. Pham then ran a block back to his restaurant, Azia and called police. Now he wonders why he was targeted. Pham says the men didn't take his car or his wallet which he says they easily could have done. "The whole time they didn't say a thing, that's a scary part of it." He wonders if it could have been a crime of retaliation. Back in June, Pham made headlines when he confronted, and then physically tackled one of two men who went to his restaurants and ran up nearly $700 in food and drinks before taking off without paying the tab. If that's not the case, then Pham wonders if he was a targeted because he's gay. Pham said last week, when his car was parked in the same lot as it was the night of the attack, he found that someone had keyed into his car the letters f-a-g. Pham says he really has no idea why he's being targeted by thugs, but says he can't live his life in fear. There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who attacked Pham.
|
 MORE HEADLINES |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
