With every beat of his heart, 29-year-old Nicholas Pellegrino felt like he was another pump closer to death.
The religion and Spanish teacher at San Francisco’s Archbishop Riordan High School was at the San Donato Milanese train station in Milan, Italy, and he was bleeding out.
It was just before noon on July 15, and Pellegrino was supposed to be on a two-hour train heading southeast to Florence but was instead grasping for hope that an ambulance would arrive in time to save him. Photos taken of him on the station floor showed his chest and shorts soaked in blood.
After 15 minutes, paramedics arrived and rushed the Staten Island, N.Y., native to a local hospital, where he somehow survived being brutally slashed in the throat.
Authorities say the attack was carried out by a group of North African migrants. Now, more than a week removed from what he described as “ISIS-level barbarism,” Pellegrino confirmed to The Times he had recovered enough to fly back to New York on Thursday.
“Miracles still happen,” Pellegrino, a professed Catholic, said in a phone interview Wednesday evening. “I’m grateful to be alive.”
Nicholas Pellegrino, right, with track athletes at Monsignor Farrell High School in New York. Former students spearheaded efforts to raise money after Pellegrino was attacked in Italy.
(Finn McCole)
The train ride was supposed to have been a small blip in Pellegrino’s day. He was leaving one set of friends in northern Italy to join another in Tuscany on what was an Italian vacation before the start of the fall semester.
Within minutes of boarding the train, Pellegrino said he was surveilled by four men sitting about 10 rows away from him.
When he put his head down, one slashed his jugular vein with a pocketknife while another stole his laptop, clothes and passport, according to Pellegrino.
One also violently ripped off a gold cross hanging around Pellegrino’s neck.
The “thugs were not afraid of me,” Pellegrino said. “They were armed with pocketknives and had the intent to murder me.”
Pellegrino thought he would die as he dragged himself off the train and to a nearby platform.
The attack happened around 11:30 a.m., according to authorities. Pellegrino boarded the train at a previous station.
He said he thought of two things in the moments after the attack.
“A, I was looking around to see where the suspects were just to make sure they wouldn’t come around to finish me off,” he said. “And then, B, I felt the blood literally pumping out of me with each beat and just hoped the ambulance would arrive on time.”
Pellegrino was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he received emergency care to stabilize the wound, according to Italian media. He was then moved to an intensive care unit, where he received nine stitches.
He had been hospitalized there from July 15 to Sunday, then was staying with a friend until his flight to the U.S.
The Italian newspaper Milano Today reported that two 21-year-old men were detained by police on suspicion of aggravated robbery.
Pellegrino said he testified in court Wednesday and the pair were now facing more serious charges of premeditated attempted homicide.
He said authorities found his gold cross and chain inside one of the suspect’s intestinal tracts.
The two hailed from Tunisia and are part of a gang, according to Milano Today.
“The police told me I was the seventh victim they attacked over a 48-hour stretch,” Pellegrino said. “That’s crazy stuff; that’s something from a movie.”
Although the alleged perpetrators fled the train platform, they were identified through CCTV footage, according to Milano Today.
The two men were arrested attempting to board a bus carrying a switchblade and a stolen pendant, the news outlet reported.
Pellegrino said two other suspects standing guard at the time of his attack were also arrested.
Italian authorities did not respond to a call from The Times, nor did anyone from the American Consulate in Milan.
With his passport still not recovered, Pellegrino confirmed that he was granted a temporary passport to return home.
“I was told these guys had previously served six months on various other small robberies,” Pellegrino said. “These are evil people with bad intent.”
Before working at the San Francisco high school, Pellegrino was a teacher and track coach at Monsignor Farrell High School in Staten Island, N.Y. One of his friends and former students, Finn McCole, set up a GoFundMe along with other former students of Pellegrino.
“We are setting up this GoFundMe to help Nick pay for any medical expenses incurred during his hospital stay, and to replace his lost valuables,” McCole wrote on the page.
“Finn’s a great guy and a former student athlete of mine and we’re still friends,” Pellegrino said. “I’m surprised by that amount of money, and it just goes to show that even though teaching is a thankless job, the students are craving and grateful for a role model.”
