Boston – Stephen Raymond survived last summer’s brutal baseball bat beating, but life for the 6-foot, former strapping man will never be the same.

“I’ll never walk again,” he said yesterday, sitting in a powered wheelchair in his room at the Spaulding Rehabilitative Hospital.

Medical staff used a Hoyer lift, a motorized lifting device, to move Raymond, 42, formerly of 402 Auburn St., Manchester, from his bed and into the wheelchair. Someone must shave, bathe, dress and feed him.

He’s been in the Boston hospital for two weeks and is learning how to use his muscles to move his arms even though he has no feeling in them. Raymond said he has constant pain in his shoulders. They were bruised so badly in the beating they were black, he explained.

Stephen Raymond is now able to spend a few hours a day in a wheelchair as he continues to undergo rehabilitation therapy at the Spaulding Rehabilitative Hospital in Boston. (BOB LAPREE)

For years, Raymond owned his own construction company pouring concrete foundations, driveways and patios. At the time of the assault, he had worked for a roofing company but was out of work after suffering a back injury.

The once rugged guy now must be strapped into a wheelchair, to keep him from falling out of it.

Yesterday, Raymond looked at his right arm and then his left. “You can see how they’re deformed . . . I’m getting more developed now that I can move them,” he said.

Then he lifted his right arm slowly to rest it on the wheelchair arm. He smiled. “This is progress,” he said.

Bloody assault

On Aug. 11 at about 5 p.m., Raymond was laying in a puddle of his own blood at the end of an alley on Maple Street, between Auburn and Cedar streets.

A mob of young men — who witnesses told police were mostly Hispanic along with a couple of young white men — surrounded Raymond as he was walking to a store.

Police said he was punched and kicked and hit with at least one and possibly two baseball bats. Witnesses said one teenager “snuck” up behind Raymond and swung an aluminum baseball bat, hitting him in the head.

Raymond dropped to his knees and fell to the ground.

He does not remember anything after that.

But he said it was the third time that day the same group of “young adults” had threatened and/or chased him. Two of them had baseball bats, he said.

“If I saw them again, I think I can identify them,” he said. Detectives, he said, have never talked to him about the assault.

He is angry at Manchester police who he said he called three or four times that day to tell them about the threats.

He said he called them as he was being chased down the alley by the bat-wielding men, just before they beat him.

He blames police for his injuries.

“They did a real good job that day — 911,” Raymond said. “That’s why I’m sitting here like this today because of the lack of response of the Manchester Police Department. I’ve never seen the lack of response like it was that day.”

He said usually when you call 911 in Manchester, police are at your door before you hang up the phone.

That wasn’t the case on Aug. 11, he said.

Raymond said the three incidents never involved any little kids —10 or 12 year olds. It was always the same group of “young adults” who he described as Caucasians with an average age of 20.

Earlier this week, Felix Urena, 21, of 286 Concord St., was acquitted of first-degree assault. Prosecutors said the 6-foot-5 Hispanic man orchestrated the assault on Raymond who he believed “smacked” his younger brother, Julio, 13, in a confrontation over the BB shootings.

“Of course, that’s their story,” Raymond said. “Of course that’s what they’re going to say . . . Do you think they’d admit they had a problem with me so they beat me up? They got their story straight. That’s their story and they’re going to stick with it.”

He said he was beaten up by the same group of young adults running around with a gun, “a gun that will actually put out a car window. It’s got nothing to do with little 12-year-old, little 10-year-old kids.”

Before the beating

On Aug. 11 a little before 2 p.m., Raymond was in his second-floor apartment when he heard the sound of glass breaking.

He said for a couple of weeks, windows on cars in the neighborhood were being shot out by someone firing a BB gun. Police were aware of the vandalism but “they hadn’t had any leads yet,” he said.

Raymond went outside to see if either his car or that of his girlfriend of 3½ years, Debbi Locken, was damaged. He went outside to confront the group of “young adults,” he said.

He said they were standing across the street outside the European Market. Two of them had baseball bats, he said.

“They obviously didn’t want to be confronted,” he said. “ . . . They were taunting me and laughing at me. They had this kind of pellet gun. They were laughing and shooting at me.”

The pellets were fluorescent colored, he said. He called police and so did a neighbor. Officer Timothy Feliciano arrived but by then the gang of kids had left.

Raymond said Feliciano took the pellets.

Came out swinging

After he left, Raymond went back outside. It was about 3:10 p.m. and the same gang returned. Two of them had baseball bats. They chased him into his building.

“I had to slam the door shut because they were swinging the bats,” he recalled.

He called 911 again, he said. Police said he told a state dispatcher he was being chased by someone with a bat and then he hung up. An officer called him later and left a message on his voice mail.

Ninety minutes later, at about 4:45 p.m., Raymond decided to go to Mr. Market on Spruce Street. He said he is unclear why he was going to the store. Before he left, however, he looked around to be sure the men who chased him were not around. He did not see them.

When he got to the alley between Cedar and Auburn streets, however, they reappeared.

They started chasing him, he said. Police said he was surrounded by 15 to 20 people. He was punched and kicked and then hit with the baseball bat.

He doesn’t remember anything after that, he said.

Scars still visible

The scar from his two brain surgeries can clearly be seen but his brown hair is starting to grow over it.

“It was painful . . . having your skull bone put back together and the skin sewed back together over it, “ he said. He said the pain is indescribable.

His nose, which had to be stitched back together, has a faint scar on it.

He will remain in the Boston hospital for another six weeks. After that, he said he expects to move to Florida where his parents are trying to find assisted-living housing for him.

He wants Locken, who he calls “my heart,” to live there with him, if possible.

“I sure want her to go. That’s my plan anyway,” he said. “We’re a team. I’d hate to have this thing be the death of us. We’ve been through a lot here and I’d hate to have this injury come between us, split us up.”

He is angry he has been left a quadriplegic because of a gang of young adults who he said were shooting out windows on parked cars.

And he wants them to be held accountable for what they did to him.

But, for a man who has endured what he has, he is unusually upbeat about his prognosis.

“I will never fully recover but my spirits are as good as they could be,” he said.