![]() Riot bashing victim speaks out 20jan06 THE man at the centre of the Cronulla riots bashing tape released this week wants to see attackers brought to justice. The man, identified only as Steve, was filmed by a security camera as an angry mob trapped him in a door alcove where they beat him until police arrived. The attack took place about five weeks ago at the height of racial tensions in Sydney's beachside suburbs and the video tape's belated public release this week resulted in the replacement of the Sydney riots' senior investigating officer. "I actually thought I was going to die," Steve told the Nine Network tonight. "I just remember getting hit in the head a lot, and looking up and seeing a white steel bar hitting me in the head." Steve said he deliberately fell to the ground in a bid to limit the amount of people who could strike him, all the while he was pleading for his attackers to: "Stop, Stop, please stop". "(But) they were just consumed by anger ... there was no way they were going to stop," he said. "It felt like a long time but it was only about a minute or so ... It seemed like 20 or 30 guys, I really don't know, they just surrounded me. "It was only the police sirens that made them stop." Steve sustained cuts and bruising, a damaged knee and a fractured arm in the attack. Despite the video tape being in police possession for several weeks, no-one has been charged in relation to the attack. "I'd obviously like to see them brought to justice," Steve said. "I didn't think there would be much chance of anyone being apprehended without the video footage being released, I pretty much knew that. "I'm just hopeful now, now that they have released the video footage, someone will see something or someone will know something ..." His attackers, and people involved in the race-related violence, were also were in need of a "reality check", Steve said. "You've just go to chill out ... you know, people get a bit hot under the collar and excited but they need to take a step back and have a reality check," he said. "It's Australia, people complain about the place but it's not really that bad."
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