Xinmin Liang is too frightened to stay at his downtown Portland apartment since he said a stranger approached him on a floating dock along the Eastbank Esplanade and began hitting him in the head with a thick stick.
The 73-year-old Liang said he reflexively lifted his arms and the flogging ended only when the stick broke. Now, several days after the attack Tuesday, one of his eyes is still mostly swollen shut and he’s scheduled for surgery next week on one of his arms that was fractured in two places.
Liang’s daughter, Jie Liang, said medical staff believe her father would be dead if he hadn’t raised his arms to protect his head from the brute force of the blows.
“He’s shaken to the core,” said Jie Liang. “This is just unthinkable brutalness. It feels like attempted murder.”
With her father’s permission, Jie Liang shared a photo taken after the attack. Warning: The photo, which is part of the family’s Reddit post, is graphic.
Jie Liang said her father loves fishing and in drier, warmer weather he will spend almost every day on the floating dock along the Esplanade between the Burnside and Steel bridges.
She said her father has relayed the events of that day to her – that it was about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when he was fishing off the dock and a stranger approached. Without saying a word, the man began beating him with what appeared to be a stick or log that was about 5-inches thick. After it snapped, the man walked away but circled back for what her father thought would be another round.
But Jie Liang said her father picked up a nearby stick and fended off his attacker. He then had the wherewithal to grab the fish he’d already caught, pick up some evidence – a royal blue beanie with a Willamette Week logo that the man had been wearing – and head for a MAX train back to the apartment he shares with his wife.
“He thought, ‘OK, I can still move. I can walk to the MAX,” Jie Liang said.
Jie Liang said her father picked up this beanie off the…
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