Andrew's assault by Jeff O'Bannon at a Boston bar

Andrew’s assault by Jeff O’Bannon at a Boston bar begins as an evening of nostalgia and ends as a wound that continues to shape Andrew’s sense of safety. In November 2005, O’Bannon struck Andrew at the Penalty Box after using a homophobic slur; years later, Andrew recognized the man among the strangers holding his family at the cabin. The assault’s lasting force lies not only in what happened, but in the unresolved question of why Andrew was singled out—and in the way the attacker’s identity returns inside a new, far more immediate danger.

Setting and the Evening Before the Attack

The Penalty Box stood on Causeway Street, across from North Station and Boston Garden. A hockey bar in name, it drew hard-drinking patrons and crowds connected to Bruins and Celtics games. Its upstairs room, the Upstairs Lounge, had once hosted Friday-night dance parties. Andrew and a small group of friends had attended those events regularly for nearly five years, including after the parties moved to Allston. By 2005, the upstairs venue had long been closed.

That November, Andrew and his friend Ritchie went to the bar after leaving a Celtics game early. The home team was losing badly, and the two friends had come for a drink and a measure of nostalgia. Andrew wore an old Robert Parish tank top over a long-sleeved shirt; Ritchie wore a new Paul Pierce jersey, despite having spent much of the game criticizing the player. They had been inside for less than ten minutes when the assault began.

Andrew went to the bar for two beers, then carried them to Ritchie, who was talking with a middle-aged woman in a Bruins hoodie. She joked with Ritchie, complimented him, and asked him to dance, although no music was playing. The television carried the muted audio of the game. Ritchie playfully prolonged the conversation, making excuses about his sore legs and balance while the woman encouraged him and asked for another beer. Andrew joined in the banter. The exchange was social and light; nothing in Andrew’s recollection suggests that he anticipated a confrontation.

The Assault and Its Immediate Aftermath

O’Bannon came up behind Andrew and addressed him with a homophobic slur. Andrew turned toward the speaker, but had not yet seen O’Bannon in person. As he turned, O’Bannon hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Andrew remembered the sound and a sudden cold sensation, then the floor drawing nearer as he fell. He later recalled lying facedown while people shouted. He did not remember getting into the ambulance, though he did remember insisting on sitting upright during the ride.

At the hospital, Andrew saw Eric for the first time after the attack. Eric asked what had happened; Andrew began to answer, then stopped himself before completing a thought that would have turned the question into self-blame. His recollection of that pause shows how quickly the assault became entangled with shame, even though the attack had been carried out by someone else.

O’Bannon later pleaded guilty. In court, he said that he had been drunk and not thinking clearly, claimed Andrew had accidentally spilled a beer on one of his friends, and described the group as looking for a fight. Andrew’s account contradicts that explanation: he remembers no such spill and recalls O’Bannon’s slur as clear and deliberate. O’Bannon also maintained that the slur did not explain his actions and was merely language he and his friends used. The assault is therefore presented alongside a dispute over its motive, not as an incident whose full circumstances have been resolved.

The Attack’s Long Afterlife

For years, the assault recurred in Andrew’s preparation for boxing lessons, workouts, and visits to the shooting range. During the first couple of years afterward, difficulty sleeping sometimes led him to search online for O’Bannon. Once he had exhausted information about his attacker, Andrew spent hours reading about other people with the same name, including men with unrelated lives and jobs. Eric once found Andrew asleep at a desk chair after one such night and led him back to bed.

Andrew eventually stopped searching. He no longer looked over his shoulder in public as often or as urgently, although the vigilance never disappeared completely. In unguarded moments, he continued to turn over questions that the court proceedings had not settled: why O’Bannon had chosen him, whether he had recognized Andrew as gay, and whether someone else might have been attacked if circumstances had differed. Andrew knew the slur had made the hatred unmistakable, but could not know how O’Bannon had identified him or whether the choice had been deliberate in advance. The assault left not only a memory of violence but an enduring uncertainty about how he had been marked as its target.

Recognition at the Cabin

During the later cabin crisis, Andrew recognized Redmond as Jeff O’Bannon. Redmond’s shaved head, greater age, and substantially heavier appearance had changed his face enough that Andrew did not recognize him immediately. Once he did, Andrew told Eric that the man was O’Bannon and asked whether Eric understood who he meant. The revelation recast the earlier assault: the attacker Andrew had spent years trying to understand was now among the people threatening his family.

That recognition does not provide an answer to Andrew’s old questions about why he was selected at the bar. Instead, it brings the uncertainty into the present, where the attacker is no longer a name in searches or a figure described in court testimony. Redmond is later killed at the cabin, and Andrew is present as his companions’ violence reaches its fatal conclusion. The connection between the two episodes makes the assault part of the family’s immediate crisis while preserving the distinction between what Andrew knows—O’Bannon attacked him—and what he has never been able to determine about the attacker’s choice.