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Noah Rabbani should be attending his grade 10 classes at Saltfleet High School but instead he’s in the intensive care unit. He was brutally beaten Sunday morning with a baseball bat suffering head trauma, bruising on his jaw, broken teeth, and injuries to his spine.

“He’s gone through brain surgery because the skull got fractured so they had to put some plates and screws inside there and let that heal.”

Noah’s father Khalid Rabbani says his son is a kind young man who has won a number of academic and citizenship awards and hopes to become a neurosurgeon one day.

The attack happened at Showcase and Fletcher in Hamilton on Sunday in the early morning hours shortly after midnight. Noah was walking from a friends house to his grandmother’s when police say two men pulled up next to him in a car, got out with a baseball bat and hit him several times.

A blow to the head sent Noah to the ground.

“As he got knocked down and was about to get hit again someone came out of their house, the assailants saw him and they jumped in the car and took off and left my son there.”

Before the attackers left they took Noah’s backpack. But if that neighbour didn’t come outside “we would be at a funeral right now burying my son guaranteed.”

Unable to walk, Noah crawled on his hands and knees to his grandmother’s home just a few doors away and was taken to hospital.

The Rabbani’s are of Pakistani Muslim background, and his father worries this could have been a hate crime.

“I hope it’s not a racism thing, it could be a random attack. Which I hope it was just a random attack and not a racist attack at all.”

A Gofundme page has been set up to cover expenses and therapy their insurance company won’t pay for. The fundraising campaign has raised nearly $40,000 in one day.