Photojournalist makes comeback after brutal beating

Jorge Cueto was in his final year at Laurentian University when his life was forever changed by strangers in the dark.

In the fall of 1998, the then 22-year-old history student was badly beaten after trying to stop a couple of thugs who had broken into a friend's car.

“I was a fast runner. I bolted out to try to stop them,” Cueto says.

He caught up with the thieves, but a group of their friends was waiting out of sight. Cueto was left unconscious.

Six weeks later, he awoke from a coma in hospital. He suffered a head injury and had severe brain swelling.

“I had no broken bones, but a broken soul,” he says.

On the long road back to normal, he had to relearn to walk and write. Initially, he had trouble speaking.

During his time in the hospital, his father was dying of cancer. Shortly after he left the hospital, eight months after the attack, his father died.

“I think he was just holding on to see if I was going to be OK,” Cueto, who is now 35, says.

Although his injuries are not readily obvious, he still uses a cane for balance when he is tired. He is no longer a fast runner. He has some short-term memory loss as well, and he suspects his personality has changed a bit because of the brain injury.

Cueto went back to Laurentian in the winter of 2000 to finish his degree. He took additional courses including English-as-a-Second-Language to help improve his speech.

When he graduated in 2005, Cueto knew he needed to learn to be independent again.

He went to Spain by himself for two or three months. The experience in his father's native country helped him to regain his confidence.

While he was in the hospital, his therapists learned of his interest in photography, so they enrolled him in a black-and-white photography course.

Cueto remembered his earlier dreams of driving around the countryside on a motorcycle taking photographs of things that caught his interest.

In the fall of 2006, he enrolled in the photojournalism course at Loyalist College in Belleville.

Since graduating, he has worked as a freelance journalist with his own distinct style.

And maybe someday he will have enough money to buy a motorcycle.

He is not bitter about his experience.

“It made me experience the world a bit more. It made me be aware of who I am,” he says.

“I could have been bitter, but I used that to motivate me...I've change because I had to change and I was willing to change.”

The young man accused of beating Cueto got a two-year jail sentence for aggravated assault.

Recently, Cueto worked with members of the Independent Motorcycle Corporation on a book of photographs.

“My dad left this world some 13 years ago. I haven’t rode my bike since then, either. I miss them both.

“The photos at the clubhouse brought back the smells of the road, the dew in the fresh morning air,” he says. “I could recollect the sudden change that occurs in air temperature when you ride by a low-lying swamp. For me, The Ride was always in a state of flux, new scenes, new smells, new feelings.”

Vicki Gilhula is the editor of Sudbury Living Magazine.

Posted by Arron Pickard