Wheelchair-bound Manitoba man attacked in Australia

A Manitoba man, confined to a wheelchair, was a victim of a senseless act of savagery early this morning in Sydney, Australia.

35-year-old Heath Proden was waiting for a train in west-end Sydney, shortly after midnight, when he was attacked brutally by two male youths.

The suspects chased him into an elevator, struck him in the face and knocked him out of his chair.

For the next few minutes, they repeatedly beat him with two metal bars -- one pulled from the wheelchair itself.

The whole incident was caught on railway security cameras.

"He had severe injuries to his head and scalp. His head was crushed in one area," says Heath's father John Proden, who lives in Portage la Prairie.

"What kind of man or person does it take to beat anotehr man in a wheelchair?" he asks.

Kristin Sharrock, Heath's Australian girlfriend, expressed her shock.

“It's a cowardly, horrendous, horrific thing that they've done,” she says. “He's a wonderful, kind, generous, strong individual. He's been through a lot in his life and he doesn't deserve what's happened again.”

Proden had been watching friends in a band at a club before leaving to catch the train home.

New South Wales police have arrested two teens, aged 15 and 16, in relation to the incident.

Officers say it's one of the worst attacks they've seen.

“It's quite distressing to see these two young people come back and physically assault this man on a number of occasions,” says police officer Wayne Cox.

Proden is awaiting surgery for a serious skull fracture.

Sharrock says her boyfriend was finally starting to turn his life around after a snowmobile accident put him in a wheelchair.

Proden arrived in Australia in November to be with Sharrock, whom he'd met at a concert in Los Angeles. The two were planning a trip back to Canada in May, for the birth of his sister’s baby.

“He came out here for me and he’s ended up in a hospital,” says Sharrock. “To think that he could have died -- to make that phone call home to his family -- was hard enough. Let alone what could have happened.”