Posted on 09/16/2006 5:48:34 AM PDT by radar101
NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune TV reporter John Mattes still showed the signs of his on-camera beating. A widely viewed video of the attack has made him an accidental celebrity.
San Diego TV reporter John Mattes was hard at work this week, calling sources and chasing stories, even while convalescing from the bloody on-camera beating that turned him into an accidental celebrity. His body still aches pretty much everywhere. He has scratches on his face, human bite marks on his hands and arms, several cracked ribs and whiplashlike symptoms in his back. His gouged left eye socket remains tender and swollen.
“They had to remove particles of things that didn't come from me,” he said Thursday night, sitting in his cubicle at the Fox 6 News studio in Kearny Mesa. “Human hairs. Not mine. You don't want to think about that.”
His sudden fame has left him a bit mentally drained. In the past 10 days he has been interviewed by everyone from Larry King to a Costa Rican radio talk-show host. He turned down an offer to appear on David Letterman.
He's also received several hundred e-mails from people around the world who have seen the video of him being pummeled by a husband-and-wife couple upset about his investigative reporting. The footage is wildly popular on the Internet. On some Web sites, Mattes's beat-down is offered up as a kind of cyberspace sight gag.
“This video has it all!” one Web site declares. “Bloody reporter, bleeped profanity, cops with guns drawn, you name it! I thought I had seen the exciting part until about halfway through . . . then it gets AT LEAST eight times more exciting!”
Mattes, 56, said he still hasn't seen the footage in its entirety.
“I'm not a voyeur of the violence on my own body,” he said. “That would not entertain me.”
How beating happened Mattes has worked as an investigative reporter in Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego, doing the kind of in-your-face-with-a-microphone journalism that tends to irritate his subjects. Still, the Sept. 5 encounter with Assad Suleiman and Suleiman's wife, Rosa Amelia Barraza, was the first time Mattes has been physically attacked for his reporting. He had been investigating the La Jolla couple as part of a series of stories on mortgage fraud in San Diego. He was interviewing someone outside a private residence in La Jolla near a commercial building owned by Suleiman. Suddenly, Suleiman's wife arrived on the scene, yelling at Mattes, squirting him with water and at one point slapping the reporter in the face with a plastic bottle.
Suleiman drove up a few minutes later, got out of his car and started swinging at Mattes. Then Suleiman body-slammed the reporter to the ground and wrestled with him in the grass as bystanders tried to break up the fight. By the end of the melee – all of it captured on video by Mattes' cameraman – the left side of Mattes' face was covered with blood.
Suleiman and his wife now face various criminal charges, including assault. Both are free on bail. Suleiman's attorney, Kerry Steigerwalt, said his client was simply protecting his wife from a harassing reporter.
Mattes, meanwhile, has gone about his job as usual without missing a single day of work. In fact, he was back on Fox 6 answering questions about the ordeal that same night, after being treated for his injuries at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.
“You can rip my face off, but I'm still here, and I'm still going to report on the larger issues,” he said.
He is somewhat amazed, he said, at the number of people who seem fascinated by the sight of his pummeling. During his interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, he received a call from someone at CourtTV asking about how to obtain rights to the footage.
“The great thing is, this is America,” he said after hanging up the phone. “People can make money off a beating.”
Vows not to back down Mattes has worked at Fox 6 News for more than three years, and his cubicle is filled with statues and plaques he has won for his reporting on consumer fraud and other topics. This year he did a series of exposes on a used-car dealer accused of ripping off military families. Followed by a cameraman, Mattes stalked the salesman through a parking lot, asking, “How many scams are you running? How many victims do you have?”
The man tried to flee the camera while muttering, “I don't know anything about it.”
Before becoming a reporter, Mattes worked as a lawyer in Miami, earning a measure of fame for suing the U.S. government on behalf of several hundred South Vietnamese commandos who secretly worked for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Based on Mattes' legal work, the U.S. government admitted the commandos' existence and agreed to compensate them for the years they were held as prisoners of war.
None of those accomplishments, however, has afforded Mattes quite the level of public recognition that comes with getting punched and bitten on videotape.
Mattes considers himself lucky to be alive. At one point during the brawl, he said, Suleiman's wife went searching for a gun in her car but apparently was unable to find it.
“I can joke about it, but the reality is someone tried to kill me,” Mattes said.
He also defended the actions of his cameraman, who continued to film instead of putting down the camera and trying to break up the fight.
“My job is to report, his job is to record it,” Mattes said. “Had this not been on videotape, we wouldn't be having this discussion.”
In the months ahead, Mattes intends to continue reporting on mortgage fraud in San Diego. Last night, however, he was scheduled to depart for a much-needed vacation to Europe with his wife, a nurse practitioner.
Given the type of work he's done over the years, he's surprised it took this long for someone to throw a punch at him.
“My luck ran out on the tony streets of La Jolla,” he said.
Alex Roth: (619) 542-4558; alex.roth@uniontrib.com
From what I saw, the people he was investigating appeared to be pond scum.
More like sewage sludge.
"From what I saw, the people he was investigating appeared to be pond scum.
More like sewage sludge."
But, still....
Clobbering a reporter....
That's verging on "redeeming social value"..... (to swipe a phrase out of the past)
Is Assad Suleiman an Irish name?
When I look at this video, I wonder, is he thinking "Please stop beating me up" or "Please don't stop recording this"?
Next time, he might try fighting back.
And some commentators would be laughing about the "in your face" MSM reporter who got what he deserved.
You're right about that. Judging from the video he's a candy-ass puke. What else can you expect from a member of the news media though?
Long time ago in a galaxy far away I had a similar incident (I wasn't a reporter, it was a case of mistaken identity) also caught on tape. Not being a reporter, I defended myself. Had it not been for the tape I might have ended up in jail.
Have to wonder if the reporter had decked the man and even the woman if she came at him a second time what would have happened.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9152083743283802487&q=John+Mattes
good video here - hey, who ever expects this kind of violence in their day to day dealings with the public? These people are sickos and I want to hear that they are removed from society - either deport them, revoke their 'citizenship', or jail them.
Who do they keep in jail these days?
I think it's Amish, and Assad would probably be funneling the money from these fraudulent mortgages to various Amish terrorism groups.
You know those darned Amish.
Amish are a violent group of people and should all be deported. Permitting Amish and there religious violence endangers Americans.
He was not 'clobbered'; that what a teacher might have done to a student; in years past, of course.
I would rather have seen the charge as attempted murder; because it surely looked like he would not stop on his own; until he had done just that.
And for sure, those Irish know how to hurt a guy. . .
I saw the video, and I thought he came across as rather passive in the face of a direct assault. If I had been in his place I would have gone to the offensive immediately upon seeing the guy coming after me; there's no percentage in shrinking away. I also would have decked the combative woman if I had been that bystander; no telling what kind of damage she could have done while the victim was being tied up by the perp.
Thanks for posting the aticle radar.
Ping........Hmmmmmmm..... Assad and Rosa.......nice combination of middle east and mexican.....breaking the laws that Americans won't break.
""the Sept. 5 encounter with Assad Suleiman and Suleiman's wife, Rosa Amelia Barraza,""
There are times when I would clap for a badgering reporter to get a slapdown, but from what I've heard of these two scammers, well...I wish there was no bail.
Q: What goes "clop-clop, tsk, tsk, clop-clop"?
A: An Amish drive-by shaming.
(Sorry, I don't know whar came over me.)
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