A 49-year-old US citizen was beaten in a McDonald's restaurant on Bratislava's Gorky Street on March 23, leaving him with concussion, a broken ankle, and other injuries that doctors say will take two months to heal.
Drahomíra Jiráková, spokeswoman for McDonald's Czech and Slovak Republics said that it was unclear why the fight started.
"We are not aware of what the conflict was about or how it came about," Jiráková told the daily SME.
Bratislava police spokeswoman Marta Bujňáková said that police were not able to question the US citizen, named as Richard Edward O'Shaughnessy, because of the nature of his injuries.
"So far it is only known that he had some drinks in a bar and later came to the restaurant to eat. In the ambulance he said that in McDonald's he approached a man in his mid-thirties who he thought might be a foreigner because he spoke very good English," said Bujňáková.
Later the two men got into a verbal fight and then the violence started. The unknown man hit the American in the face and when he fell down, the attacker continued kicking him, Bujňáková said.
Employees of the restaurant said that the attacker was a Slovak, about 175 centimetres tall, slim, and with dark hair.
31. Mar 2003 at 0:00 | From press reports of TASR and SITA
