This time, John Huttick left the eyeball at home.
But the anger, the pain and the emotion of being blinded when he was sucker-punched outside a Burholme bar were still there when the 48-year-old bartender returned to the witness stand this morning.
Huttick was publicly humiliated on Feb. 6 when his prosthetic eye fell out as he wept telling a Philadelphia jury how he was blinded trying to break up a fight at 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 18, 2011.
The macabre incident also forced a mistrial. So when Huttick returned for the retrial today before a Common Pleas Court jury, the prosthetic was gone and his left eyelid sealed shut.
"Every night, I think about it every night," Huttick told Assistant District Attorney Mark Gilson.
"All I remember is blood and lots of pain," Huttick said, his voice cracking and tears running down his face. "There was blood in my right eye. I was covered in blood, soaked in it."
Huttick began testifying in the assault trial of Matthew Brunelli, a 23-year-old cook who allegedly stabbed him in the eye when Huttick tried to intervene in an early morning fight outside the New Princeton Tavern in the 7100 block of Rising Sun Avenue.
After Gilson is finished questioning Huttick, he will undergo questioning from defense attorney Eileen Hurley.
The trial is expected to last through the week.
For Huttick, a tall, burly red-haired man who once worked as a bouncer at New Princeton Tavern, the trial's bizarre end was just another chapter in his life's downslide since the Aug. 18, 2011 fight.
Huttick said he was at the bar that night to attend a friend's birthday party; Brunelli and a girlfriend were part of a large, loud crowd at the other end of the bar.
Sometime about 2:30 a.m., Huttick said, Brunelli's group got so loud and angry that the bartender ordered everyone to leave.
Huttick said he was finishing his beer when somebody relayed the news to people still inside that a man was being kicked in the head outside in the parking lot.
Huttick testified that he walked outside and saw one man unconscious on the ground and another kneeling trying to fix his glasses.
Huttick testified that he tried to separate Brunelli and his girlfriend from the others in the parking lot. Huttick said he held up his hands and said, "Hey, chill dude."
Brunelli, Huttick testified, was screaming and gesturing at him and then threw a punch.
"To this day I don't know what it was," Huttick said, referring to an object he believed Brunelli had in his fist.
"I thought there was something because he appeared jittery," Huttick added. "I did't really pay attention but I thought I head something jingle."
Huttick, who is suing both Brunelli and the New Princeton Tavern, said the injury and impaired vision cost him his job at another bar. He said his depression nearly ended his relationship with his girlfriend and emptied his bank account.
