3 Young Men Sentenced in Beating of Former Grossmont High Football Player

In March 2010, former Grossmont High School football player Michael Bajko was attacked with a bat and golf club at Northmont Park in northeast La Mesa, leaving him permanently disabled.

Friday in El Cajon Superior Court, three young men were sentenced to eight years or more in prison for the attack.

Anthony Long, 20; Jesse Preston, 18; and Bryant Johnson, 17—the last two tried as adults—pleaded guilty to mayhem and assault in the March 6, 2010, beating of Bajko, who was a defensive lineman for Grossmont College.

Judge John Thompson sentenced Long and Preston to eight years in prison. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years behind bars.

Eric Taylor testified during a preliminary hearing last year that he got into a verbal argument over the phone with another man early in the day of the incident and agreed to fight.

Taylor said he and the other man agreed to fight one-on-one, but he brought the 6-foot-9 Bajko along just in case.

The witness said the defendants arrived at Northmont Park around 1:30 a.m. and came at him and Bajko with weapons.

He said he ran but saw Bajko, then 18, being beaten by all three defendants, so he grabbed a tire iron and rejoined the fray.

Taylor said an acquaintance linked the defendants to the crime by searching MySpace pages.

Bajko was knocked unconscious during the fight. He testified that doctors inserted titanium plates in his left eye socket, temple and skull.

He said his medical bills topped $1 million.

A Channel 6 TV news report in 2010 quoted Bajko, a former offensive lineman for the Foothillers in 2008, as saying:  “I can no longer play any physical sport. … I can’t go snowboarding like I used to or ride a skateboard.”

Bajko told the station said he still suffers short-term memory loss and has visible scars on his head, and his injured eye socket remains disfigured.

In mid-April 2010, friends and family held a “Hike for Mike” fundraiser in the Cowles Mountain area.

Bajko’s father told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a hospital interview after the attack that his son was nonviolent, a “gentle giant.”

“He wanted to be nurse,” the paper quoted Ladislav Bajko as saying.

The elder Bajko was an immigrant from the Czech Republic who lives in La Jolla. Mike Bajko at the time of the attack was reported to be living in El Cajon with his mother, stepfather, a younger brother and a stepbrother.

City News Service contributed to this report.