But someone tried to seriously injure or kill the auto body shop worker.
Two weeks ago he was violently assaulted and now he remains in a coma.
According to his friends, a surveillance video shows what happened.
The suspect walked up behind the victim, struck him with a baseball bat, and then as Jean Pierre fell to the ground and the person responsible ran away.
"We're all distraught," a man told Eyewitness News, "We're all suffering because of what happened."
Their grief is compounded by what they know now.
Several of Jean Pierre's co-workers and friends believe the person in the video is the same teenager arrested on Wednesday for allegedly killing his mother.
Police took 16-year-old /*Dee Jackson*/ into custody after investigators say he confessed to murder.
According to the criminal complaint, Jackson says he shot his mother as she was sleeping and then beat her to death with a baseball bat.
He allegedly disposed of the body in a plastic bin on McCombs Road.
Jean Pierre's friends say once they heard that, they put two and two together, looking at the tape, and seeing the person in the hoodie running away with the bat in his right hand.
They compared the surveillance tape to a photograph of Dee Jackson under arrest.
Friday, the police commissioner confirmed that detectives are looking at the videotape.
"The individual who was assaulted is still in a coma. We haven't been able to talk to him. It's an allegation that's surfaced, that has not been substantiated," Police Commissioner /*Ray Kelly*/ said.
Sources say investigators are waiting for Pierre to emerge from the coma and are hoping that he will be able to identify his attacker.
But the victim's friends fear the worst; that this 39-year-old Haitian immigrant won't survive the baseball bat assault that has him clinging to life.
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