(Washington Post) – The hospital staff was insistent, but Brenda Bennett-Johnson could not be sure. It was May 13 and Bennett-Johnson and her sister Rosie Brooks were visiting the intensive care unit at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, watching a man struggle for his life. Authorities said they were looking at their brother.
He was confined to a hospital bed, bobbing in and out of consciousness, face beaten beyond recognition, chest only rising with breath because of the ventilator tube snaked down his throat. The man had been brought in after being discovered naked and viciously attacked on April 29.
It had been years since Brooks and Bennett-Johnson had been in touch with their sibling, Alfonso Bennett. And as the sisters recently told WBBM, through the injuries and medical contraptions, they did not recognize the man slipping away at Mercy as Alfonso. CONTINUE