Man sentenced to 20 years in attack on Australian visitor

Clinton Fookes has no desire ever to return to Champaign after a vicious beating and robbery more than a year ago left him forever changed.

The Australian researcher in artificial intelligence was visiting colleagues at the Beckman Institute as part of a two-week United States visit in October 2011. As he left a downtown Champaign restaurant on the evening of Oct. 20, he was jumped by a group of young men (newspaper code for niggers) who drove him to a secluded location, beating him as they went, and even stripping him of most of his clothing before dumping him alongside a road.

The attackers got Fookes' cell phone, his wallet with a small amount of cash, and his watch.

Fookes sustained brain damage, a broken nose, broken eye socket, broken vertebrae, frost-bitten toes, nine broken teeth and months of lost work and terrifying nightmares.