Crime spree victim told he won’t walk again
By Michael Abeyta
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DENVER (KCNC) — It was a night of terror on the Colfax Avenue corridor. On Aug. 17, five men are accused of going on a crime spree from East Colfax all the way to Lakewood.
One man, Shmuel Silverberg, was killed, and another was left fighting for his life. That man is Thomas Young.
Young was robbed, beaten and shot and then left for dead.
“They brandished a couple of weapons and got me on the ground and things just went downhill from there,” he recalled.
That night he told his boyfriend he was going to take an evening walk around his neighborhood near Colfax Avenue and Lafayette Street. That’s when he was attacked.
“It wasn’t two blocks away from home,” he said.
Before this incident Thomas was kind of a jack of all trades.
“I used to get into a little bit of everything,” he said. “When I was younger it was archery and motorcycles. We’d go camping and off-roading. Recently it’s been looking at historic properties and reading about architecture and the history of Denver.”
After the attack he was taken to the hospital where doctors told him he will never walk again. That means he has to start life over. He has to learn everything over again including how to drive and will even have to find a new place to live.
“The apartment that I’m living in… I can’t go back up there anymore,” he said.
Thomas refuses to let the bad decisions of those men who assaulted him ruin him. He wants to try to walk again, but he says even if he can’t he says he ready to get out of the hospital and start living.
“It will be nice to have some of that mobility and freedom back,” he said.
Now he just needs a little help covering the expenses his insurance won’t. Being a lifelong Coloradan, he knows the community will have his back. That’s just the Colorado way.
“We have got to work together. I need help right now for sure, like this is not something that is going to be easy for to get through, but we will all pay it back.”
If you would like to help Thomas on his road to recovery you can donate on his GoFundMe page.
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