Pat Kasthurirangaian

Pat Kasthurirangaian, the man dragged from his car and severely beaten by thugs after Milwaukee's Juneteenth Day celebration, speaks.

MILWAUKEE -- Pat Kasthurirangaian said he doesn't know the people who pulled him from his car and brutally beat him. He doesn't know why they did it. He has some serious injuries after a senseless beating that took place as people left Tuesday's Juneteenth celebration.

..."They broke my nose, they busted my lip in many places and I have a fractured eye socket," Kasthurirangaian said.

Kasthurirangaian says he was driving to the grocery store he owns about 40 minutes after the celebration officially ended. Many people had remained near the festival site after it ended at 6 p.m. A large group of young people walking in the middle of the street at 1st and Burleigh jumped on cars and broke windows.

"It all happened so fast. They started banging on the car. I don't know exactly now, but I was trying to dial 911 on my cell phone. They managed to open the door and pull the cell phone out of my hand," Kasthurirangaian said.

Kasthurirangaian was surrounded by dozens of people and several cars. He says he couldn't drive away. Video exclusive to TODAY'S TMJ4 shows Kasthurirangaian being struck repeatedly while he was still in the driver's seat.

When he got out of the car, he was kicked in the head and knocked to the ground.

"I was just hoping the police or somebody would hurry up and get there," he said.

Officers on horseback rushed in and the crowd quickly scattered, but the damage was already done. Kasthurirangaian will need surgery to repair his fractured eye socket.

"They didn't know who I was, I don't know, I've never seen them before. They didn't say a single word to me. And I know a lot of people in that neighborhood, given that I work there, and I was looking for faces that I recognize, they just wanted to beat me up," Kasthurirangaian said.

Finally, we know the name and the face of the victim.

He's not black; and he was assaulted by black men, kicked directly in the face by a black man.

Of course, Eugene Kane would call Kasthurirangaian's attackers "knuckleheads," a "few bad apples."

When I think of "knuckleheads," I think of the Three Stooges. I don't think of "knuckleheads" beating someone to the point of breaking his eye socket and nose. That's the work of brutes, vicious, violent sociopaths.

So was Kasthurirangaian the victim of a hate crime?

I think a strong case could be made that he was.

Kasthurirangaian was definitely at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

That would be the north side of Milwaukee in June 2007.