The San Jose Mercury News’ Mike Rosenberg reports a 16 year-old girl wearing a Vancouver jersey — previously visited by Canucks players when recovering from brain surgery some years ago — suffered a concussion after allegedly being attack by a Sharks fan Wednesday night.
As paramedics loaded her into an ambulance at HP Pavilion, Maggie Herger said, another Sharks fan noticed the girl’s Canucks jersey and yelled at her to “suck it up.”
One intoxicated woman wearing a Sharks jersey, who appeared to be in her 40s, kept bumping into the Herger and her sister, Maya, and yelling curses at them, the two sisters said.
Then, as the fans jumped up to celebrate a second period Sharks goal, the sisters said, the woman behind them brought down both her hands and smacked Maggie in the back of her head “really hard,” forcing Maggie to fall forward and leaving her dazed.
Her sister then rushed to an usher. Maya said she heard the woman tell the usher “she’s a Canucks fan,” but that she “didn’t mean to” hurt her.
“I was just really surprised,” Maggie said. “I didn’t think people acted like that.”
She later found out from doctors that she had suffered a slight concussion, leaving her head “spinning” a day later and her neck and head still hurting. She was bedridden, nauseous and on pain medication.
The family was relieved, however, that her benign brain tumor — which is stable and much smaller but still present next to an artery — was not impacted by the hit, and there appeared to be no internal bleeding.