Family seeks help finding disabled man's assailant

HOUSTON The victim's relatives say he was attacked after wandering off from the group home where he lives. It was in a neighborhood near Almeda and Cullen where Melvin McGaha wandered off before that brutal attack.

Deborah and Rosalind are frustrated and demanding action. They want the person who viciously attacked their mentally disabled son and brother off the streets.

"His face was probably about the size of a tire, his chest was huge. I mean he just looked like somebody else," said Rosalind, McGaha's sister.

Police say McGaha was brutally beaten outside the Greenridge Townhomes on the northeast side last Tuesday night.

"His eye sockets, we don't know if he'll be able to see again. His jaw bone, his cheek bone, his shoulders -- it's a lot broken," Rosalind said. "I really don't know everything because I'm going through a lot but a lot of things are broken on him."

McGaha was beaten up and robbed near Casa Grande and Goodson streets. It's where family members say the disabled man traveled after wandering from his adult day care center.

"That's the only place he feels confident because we was raised over there. He knows everybody over there. So whenever he wanders off that's where he normally goes," Rosalind said.

Family members say whoever injured McGaha beat him with a bat and left him for dead. According to police, a neighbor called 911 after finding McGaha on the ground. Now he's at the hospital in critical condition, and his family says they're having a hard time getting answers.

"We're not getting any help. The law seems like it's chunking it to the side. That what's aggravating me," said McGaha's mother, Deborah.

McGaha's mom says she just wants her son's attacker off the streets before someone else is hurt.

"To look at him and actually see him like that and knowing that this person is loose, if they don't do anything, it can happen again and again," Deborah said.

Houston police say they have no leads in the case and this is an ongoing investigation. They are encouraging anyone with information about the assault to contact homicide detectives at 713-308-3600.