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PITTSBURGH, PA —
Pittsburgh police have charged a 15-year-old North Side boy in an attack on a teacher from the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

The boy was charged Tuesday with simple assault and taken to Shuman Juvenile Detention Center. He also faces a probation violation, police said.The attack against 50-year-old James Addlespurger on Tito Way -- an alley off Liberty Avenue -- was captured by surveillance cameras last Thursday
afternoon.

“The video speaks for itself, but I don’t remember it happening when it happened,” Addlespurger told Channel 4 Action News anchor Mike Clark. The video showed Addlespurger walking by a group of teenagers when one of them abruptly turned and hit him. Addlespurger fell face-first to the
concrete and his head struck a curb as the teens walked away.

“I was shocked at the whole narrative of it. There were six kids. There was me walking, just normally on my way, and boom came the punch and down I went, straight down with my face falling and hitting the cool concrete. I was shocked. I was speechless. I didn’t really know what to
think,” said Addlespurger.

He showed Clark his injuries, which include two stitches on his lip, a bruise on his face and cuts on his arm.

Addlespurger, who teaches 10th- and 12th-grade English at CAPA, said it’s still tough
to breathe because the right side of his body is heavily bruised.

“I look pretty good now compared to how I did look. My face was all puffed up, and I’m thankful that I can walk and talk, and I’m feeling OK, except when I bend over to tie my shoe and the breathing hurts, but I’m hopeful all of that will go away,” said Addlespurger.He told Clark the surveillance video has been hard to escape at times.

“It pops up everywhere, so my mother has to deal with that, my wife has to deal with that, my daughter has to deal with that, my students have to deal with that, and I feel a responsibility to the community, as a teacher who has been a public servant for 18 years in that capacity, that I need to speak out and say that I’m doing better,” said Addlespurger.

http://www.wtae.com/news/local/WTAE-News