On an early evening in June 2008, 45-year-old Gary St. Hilaire was walking in the area of Bartlett and Walnut streets in Lewiston when he was jumped by a group of young people. One of the attackers swung an ice chopper at Gary’s head and knocked him unconscious.

The ice chopper was swung with such force, the wooden handle broke in half. The blade of the tool became embedded in the top of St. Hilaire’s head. Fragments of his skull pierced his brain. The wound was nine inches long and ultimately required 48 staples to close.

For two weeks, St. Hilaire would not awake, lingering in a coma in the hospital while his family huddled around him. Even the most optimistic of them did not expect him to live.

But St. Hilaire did live. He awoke from the coma with three plates in his head and part of his body paralyzed. There was a chance he’d never walk again and that he might be partially blind.

St. Hilaire proved those predictions wrong, too. He spent several weeks in the hospital and then several more at a rehabilitation facility in Kennebunkport. He began to move around a bit with the use of a walker. His eyesight came back, for the most part.

“The doctors said he was a walking miracle,” said Louise Poulin, St. Hilaire’s mother.

Now, six months later, St. Hilaire is being fitted with a brace for his right leg, which remains paralyzed from the knee down. With the brace, he can get around without a walker.

He still has blinding headaches and trouble with his short-term memory. He goes to therapy sometimes three days a week.

But St. Hilaire is alive.

“He’s got a lot of courage,” said his mother. “He was so determined. He told me he was going to walk again. God love him, he’s a good boy.”

At the end of October, St. Hilaire struggled up the steps to the Androscoggin County Superior courthouse to watch as an 18-year-old Lewiston man admitted to swinging the ice chopper that struck him.

Luke Blair pleaded guilty to a charge of elevated aggravated assault. St. Hilaire’s family waited for justice to be doled out after the attack that left St. Hilaire maimed, disabled and nearly dead.

“The whole family, we all suffered,” Poulin said.

Blair was ordered to prison for just slightly more than three years.

– Mark LaFlamme