“I’m passionate about marathons,” says Alan Jose de Lima (35) as he holds tightly the medals he has collected from the races he has run – among them the Rio Half Marathon from his hometown in Brazil. Now he fears he will never race again after being attacked and badly beaten while working as a food delivery rider in Dublin.
“I’ve always liked running. And now I won’t be able to any more because I have a metal plate in my knee, a metal plate in my tibia. I can’t do the sports I like any more ... I told the doctor I was a runner, he said: Now you won’t be able to run any more.”
It has left him feeling “such a huge void, a deep sadness, a huge sadness”, he said. “How am I going to go back to being a normal guy? Being an athlete with a worthless leg?”
Mr de Lima has worked as a delivery rider since he came to Ireland to study English about three years ago. He told The Irish Times he sold his house in Brazil to pursue a better life here, to escape the violence of Rio de Janeiro, but his Irish dream became a nightmare on October 12th. He made a food delivery in Finglas, Dublin 11, but shortly after handing over the takeaway, about 100m from the house, he was attacked by two young men.
“I saw these two guys coming down the sidewalk from the opposite side. And when I got closer to them, they could see that my bag on the back was a [delivery] bag ... Then they lowered a hood, lifted a ninja mask, and one of them ran and pushed me. I couldn’t hold on and fell to the ground.
“When I tried to get up to defend myself, the other one came in a rush with a very heavy rubbish bin and threw it at me. That bin ended up hitting my leg, causing it to break. I tried to get up to defend myself but I couldn’t. Then I saw they were going to come at me and start beating me.”
While he shouted for help, the assailants went to steal Mr de Lima’s electric bike – which he had recently purchased.
“I still managed to pull the bike with the bag, which was connected to the battery. And then I pushed it down on the ground, screaming. One guy ran down the street. But the other one used so much force on me that he managed to break the battery cable [which was hooked on to the bag] and grabbed the bike, lifted it up and ran away with it.”
Lying on the street, in severe pain in the cold weather, he continued to shout for help.
“I kept calling ‘help, help, help’ for about five, 10 minutes, until four people came in a car. Two men, two girls, they were all young. They asked what had happened. I told them, feeling immense pain. And then the two girls stayed with me. They called the ambulance, they called the police.”
Mr de Lima said that two men in a car tried to find the thieves, with no success, and some local residents emerged from their homes later to give support.
“One of them put a pillow under my head, the other one put a blanket over me, because it was 2 or 3 degrees.
“I tried to contact my friends through other people’s phones, because my phone at the time of the fall had broken. So I was left without any communication.”
He was brought by ambulance to Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown, where an X-ray confirmed the damage to his left leg.
“They said that I had a horrible fracture in my tibia, a very serious injury to the tibia, and that my knee was blown out. That they would have to put metal fixators in to hold my knee and tibia in place. And that I will probably have arthritis in the future because of the injury.”
He spent six days in hospital, undergoing surgery on his tibia and knee.
“I will have to stay for three months without being able to move my knee. And after another three months, I’ll have to go back to the hospital and do physical therapy, until I can walk normally again.”
In addition to the blow to his health and mobility, he has suffered financial losses. According to Mr de Lima, this is his third bike stolen in Dublin.
With each bike costing about €1,500 this adds up “to around €4,000-€5,000 ... just during the time that I’ve been here in Ireland”. He has had to spend money that he had hoped to save.
“Even the money from Brazil, you ended up spending here too”, with “absurdly expensive rent” in Dublin adding to his woes.
With no entitlement to sickness benefit in Ireland, Mr de Lima said his situation “is very desperate”. He is now depending on donations from friends and crowdfunding to pay the costs of rent, food and household bills.
“Now I’m going through financial difficulties because I can’t be the provider of my life ... I depend on other people’s crowdfunding. I have to expose myself emotionally on the internet to ask for help. That’s a tremendous shame.
“Which man would want to be helped by other people, you know? Like, I’ve been working since I was a child, I’ve always been the provider of my life. I work hard, I always fight, and now I’m in a situation like this. The cost of living here is high, everything has to be paid for, you pay rent, electricity, there are a lot of expenses.”
He feels despondent “because I came seeking a better life, of security, because we know that Rio de Janeiro is very violent, it’s aggressive, and I came to make my life here. I came to seek opportunities here. I love Ireland, I love Irish people. And when you get here, you lose what you built,” he says.
Asked what he would say to his attackers, he replies: “This isn’t right ... We’re just working, we just want to do our job, we don’t want to bother anyone, we don’t want to bully anyone. Please, stop the attacks. Stop the attacks.”
In a statement, gardaí said they were investigating an alleged incident of assault and theft from a person in Finglas on October 12th.
“A man was conveyed to Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown for treatment of serious injuries, believed at this time to be non-life-threatening. During the course of the incident, an electric bike was taken. Investigations ongoing,” the Garda added.
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