By Dustin Brown
A Christ the King basketball player was upgraded to stable condition this week after he was violently attacked with a baseball bat on Juniper Valley Road in Middle Village last week, a hospital official said.
Michael King, who will be a junior at Christ the King High School in Middle Village, was transferred from pediatric intensive care to the hospital’s regular pediatric unit following neurosurgery to repair a skull fracture, Elmhurst Hospital spokesman Dario Centorcelli said.
“He was in great spirits,” Centorcelli said shortly after visiting King’s hospital room on Tuesday.
James Montefusco, 18, and Patrick Kiernan, 17, both of Glendale, were charged with second-degree attempted murder, first and second-degree assault, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon in the attack, the Queens district attorney said.
According to the criminal complaint, Montefusco approached King with a baseball bat at the corner of 80th Street and Juniper Valley Road shortly after 8 p.m. July 30, after telling Kiernan to pull over the car they were riding in. Montefusco and King began wresting as King attempted to remove the bat from his attacker’s hands, the complaint said. Kiernan and a third suspect who had been riding in the car then held King down while Montefusco struck him on the face and head with the bat, the complaint said.
King sustained multiple skull fractures and a brain hemorrhage requiring surgery, according to the complaint.
“It’s very upsetting to see a friend have to go through that,” said Artie Cox, who coached King on the Junior Varsity basketball squad at Christ the King last year.
“Mike’s a very good kid, he’s a very good basketball player and it’s just sad to hear what happened,” said Nathan Blue, a recruiter for the Real Scout Basketball web site.
Blue, who has known King since he was 12 and has coached him in basketball, said he believes the accused attackers had previously harassed King in high school.
“I think that they just didn’t like him because he was just kind of like ‘the man’ in the school, so it was more of a jealousy thing,” Blue said.
King was listed among the top 100 high school junior basketball players in the nation this year, said Blue, and had been ranked No. 2 in the city following his eighth-grade season.
“Right now at first we’re just worrying about his life — basketball’s not that important right now,” Cox said. “God willing, he’ll recover and be able to come back to where he was.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
