A Brooklyn musician is recovering after he lost an eye after he was attacked by a man with a hammer last week. Dru Barnes, a member of the band Jogyo, was walking home to Fort Greene from a friend's place in Bed-Stuy around 10 a.m. last Thursday when a man with a hammer came from behind and attacked him, striking him several times in the head. Barnes, 34, was rushed to the hospital: "I arrive two hours later at the trauma unit, and there is Dru on a gurney. It was horrific, it was like a horror movie," Gerrit Vooren, the Bed-Stuy friend who Barnes had visited, told NBC 4 New York.
Cops believe the suspect followed Barnes for a block before attacking him in front of 934 Jefferson Avenue. Officers have now recovered the hammer used in the attack, but the suspect is still at large. Police haven't determined a motive yet, but they do not believe it was a hate crime or a robbery. "I'm not sure what the motive was," Barnes said from the hospital in the video above.
Vooren has set up a Facebook page to bring attention to the attack and help pay for the costs of the multiple surgeries Barnes has ahead of him. Doctors want to put in a prosthesis, but his optic nerve was completely severed, so he'll never be able to see out his left eye. "To be honest, having been hit in the head with a hammer, it's a miracle Dru is alive, and even more so that there's no brain damage at all," Vooren wrote.
