WESTLAND, Mich. – Westland police are looking for three men who attacked an Army veteran Thursday morning outside a 7-Eleven.
Adam Wagner, 25, told Local 4 he had gone to the store on S. Venoy Road to buy cigarettes, but noticed three men giving the female clerk a hard time. He said he intervened and then walked out, but the three men followed.
Wagner said the men shouted racial and homophobic slurs, referencing the U.S. Army and military insignias on his vehicle, before they began punching and kicking him.
"They were yelling at me for being part of the military that lets a bunch of 'n-words' run around in it," Wagner said. "I took great offense to that because my best friend in the army was black."
Wagner served in Afghanistan as an infantryman in 2011.He said he initially tried to follow the men, but they turned around and starting beating on him again.
"They got me to the ground and the first thing I said is cover my head," Wagner said. "They got a bunch of punches in at the side of my head but the kicks were right to the face. It just kept going on and on, I didn't know when it was going to stop."
After the men fled, Wagner went to the closest home he could get to and asked for help. He's now at home recovering. His nose is broken, his lip had to be stitched up and he can barely see out of his left eye because of how swollen it is.
"It makes me real upset because I know what me and my brother went through," Wagner said. "And it's something that only less than one percent of this country have actually gone through in this world."
His girlfriend can't believe anyone would do this to an American hero.
"It breaks my heart to even think about this six-foot-four tall man just laying on the ground in the fetal position getting his butt kicked," Wagner's girlfriend Angela Deguise said. "It's sickening."
Wagner says Westland EMT workers were rude and uncompassionate and didn't even help him to the ambulance.
Westland Police are investigating the incident and seeking assistance in identifying Wagner's attackers, who were caught on surveillance camera.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Westland Police Department at 734-722-9600 or the Westland Police Detective Bureau at 734-721-6311.