"You don't wake up in the morning thinking you're gonna go out, come back with stitches in your head," Julian says.
Julian asked that Eyewitness News not reveal his last name because he is terrified of the people who attacked him.
Julian and his friend David live in Suburban New Jersey, and lobbied their parents to let them go into the city alone for the first time on Sunday night for a concert.
Just after 11 p.m., they were back at Port Authority looking for their bus back home, when four strangers surrounded Julian without a word.
"I don't know what it was about me, but I got their attention. They got me!" says Julian.
David says he saw Julian falling towards the floor, and then sees a guy standing over him.
"I started feeling dizzy, I go and push the guy off of him," says David, "there was all the blood in my eyes – blood was gushing, going out."
Luckily police were already on the scene, with Easter Sunday increasingly known as a gang initiation day. Four years ago, people were shot blocks away.
"It was just a random act – it was just something that was done for no reason," says Julian's dad, James.
Police have made no arrests in Julian's case. After a night in the hospital, he returned home on Monday morning with 24 stitches, a broken arm, and a very thankful Dad.
"Thank God my son is alive and I was able to come home," says James, "I'm talking to him, I'm hugging him, and it could have been a lot worse, and I'm thinking about it."
