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After assault, a diminished man's life is further diminished

Thomas Medero was found lying unconscious on a North Philadelphia street the night of Dec. 13, his head smashed in, his skull fractured.

Thomas Medero was found lying unconscious on a North Philadelphia street the night of Dec. 13, his head smashed in, his skull fractured.

In all likelihood, the 60-year-old was assaulted. But because of his brain injuries, Medero doesn't know what happened.

Sitting in a wheelchair at a Montgomery County nursing home this month, he said he had taken a subway to the Frankford Transportation Center, on his way to visit his girlfriend. He had withdrawn $40 or $60 from an ATM at the terminal. Maybe that's why he was attacked.

His sister Joan disagrees. He was found near Germantown and Allegheny Avenues, just two blocks from a recovery house where he was staying. That is nearly five miles from the Frankford Transportation Center. And his wallet, with his ATM card, was found back at the recovery house.

Much remains unknown about what happened that Sunday night to Medero, who, despite suffering from alcohol and heroin addictions for much of his life, had tried to get his life back on track.

Now doctors say his life has been irreparably diminished.

As Medero said once to a Philadelphia judge during a 2005 hearing, "Sometimes, life situations just threw me curves, and I can't get it together."

A passerby found Medero on the 1100 block of West Hilton Street and called 911, said his sister, 69, who lives in Chester County and spoke on condition that her married name not be used.

She said it was initially thought her brother had passed out drunk. It was not until a doctor opened his skull that the extent of his injuries became clear.

No police report was filed and no police investigation was undertaken because her brother's case was not initially considered a crime, she said. A police spokesman confirmed this.

Joan said a Philadelphia police detective later told her an investigation could be undertaken if there were a witness or if her brother remembered what happened.

At Temple University Hospital, neurosurgeon Charles Munyon immediately operated on Medero, removing pieces of skull from his brain. Munyon said Medero likely had been assaulted with a blunt object, or someone could have stomped on him while he was on the ground.

The damage to the right side of the brain has left him paralyzed on the left side of his body, the doctor said. And, Munyon said, it's "very likely" that Medero will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home.

"He can't walk," the doctor said. "He can't use his left arm for anything. He has executive function problems in terms of impulse control, in terms of carrying out complex tasks. He doesn't pay attention to or recognize, more or less, the left half of his world."

He cannot "be allowed out where there might be cars because he won't even think to look to his left before he tries to cross the street," the doctor said.

Medero speaks fluently, sitting in a conference room, dressed in a blue cotton shirt and jeans. Since high school in Long Island, he has battled addiction. He began using heroin, he said, to deal with what he called emotional pain: "I was a fat kid, and I was tortured by my friends."

He and his sister grew up in Hicksville, N.Y. After high school, he played bass guitar in a rock band in bars and installed carpeting. In the 1980s, he examined claims in New York City for the state Workers' Compensation Board.

One day after work, he was taking the subway from City Hall in Lower Manhattan to Union Square to meet his then-wife. He was engrossed in the New York Post when he realized the train was at 14th Street. The train doors closed. He tried to jump onto the station platform from between two train cars, but his right leg got caught and the train dragged him before a conductor stopped it.

His sister says she thinks her brother was an easy target on the night he was attacked because he walked with a cane.

Medero moved to the Philadelphia area around 1990 to live with his sister in Chester County for several months while he was working toward his paralegal certificate, his sister said. He worked at law firms in Chester County and Center City.

"You could tell instantly he was well-spoken, he was intelligent," said Brendan Sherman, his boss at Shapiro & Kreisman in Berwyn. "But you knew there was something holding him back."

Medero dressed well and was exceptional at his work, he said. But some days it appeared that he had had a rough night.

As a paralegal, Medero processed bankruptcies and foreclosures.

"He got his work done, It was all correct," Sherman said. "He took his own initiative. He was clearly a guy, had he had a different life, he had the smarts to be a lawyer himself."

Sherman said he considered Medero the best of 35 paralegals in the office, so when he decided to move to a different firm in Center City Philadelphia to start a new practice at that firm, he chose Medero to go with him.

But Sherman said the new practice could not bring enough clients over, so he had to lay Medero off in 1996.

Medero continued to struggle with his addictions for the next two decades. He did more paralegal work, and he had a job in a South Philadelphia bakery. A car accident brought more trouble. Two days after his 43rd birthday, on Oct. 5, 1998, he plowed through a stop sign at 20th and McKean Streets in South Philadelphia and struck a 56-year-old woman.

Medero stopped his car. Blood tests detected alcohol, antianxiety medications, and methadone, used to treat heroin addiction.

He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI. He recalled serving seven months under house arrest and had to pay $5,472 in restitution for the woman's injuries.

From 2008 to last year, he was arrested about a dozen times for summary and misdemeanor offenses mostly related to alcohol, heroin, loitering, and disorderly conduct.

But he had also worked in recent years to get his life back on track. He had obtained a real estate license in 2006. He studied at Community College of Philadelphia and received an associate's degree in 2012.

In 2011 and 2012, he wrote essays for Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, a group that investigates "fringe-science claims."

He enrolled at Temple University, where he pursued a bachelor's degree in psychology for a year and a half.

Last October, shortly after his 60th birthday, Medero wound up in a recovery house on Park Avenue in North Philadelphia, a few blocks from where he was found in December.

For the past several months, he has been at the Montgomery County nursing home. His sister says Medicare and Medicaid had paid for his medical and nursing care.

She and her brother were not always close, she said, given their difference in age and interests. But when needed, she would always help him.

"He's my brother," she said. "We always loved each other." If his electricity was going to be shut off, she wouldn't send cash, but would pay the bill.

When she learned he was attacked last December, she broke down and cried. Initially, it did not appear he would survive.

"I feel like he's such an intelligent person and has so much potential," she said. "He has such a wonderful sense of humor, he has such a sharp wit, he's a talented musician. On so many levels, he has so much to offer."

Medero speaks of big dreams.

"I really can't wait to get back to school because that's where I thrive," he said. He spoke of studying for the LSATs, heading to law school. His sister wonders how he could do that, given his injuries.

She hopes someone will speak out about what happened Dec. 13. "That would be my hope," she said. "Not that that's going to change anything. But you'd like to know that someone would be held accountable."

shawj@phillynews.com

215-854-2592

@julieshawphilly