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Unhealed wounds A late-night brawl left 24-year-old Nick Artman dead, his head broken like a shattered egg shell. With the two men arrested in the melee sentenced to fewer than 6 years in prison, the family still feels more pain than solace.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Christy Gutowski Daily Herald Legal Affairs Writer

Their phone rang at 5:28 a.m.

Art and Pam Artman rushed to a hospital to be with one son while family members headed to the bedside of their oldest, being treated at another facility for less serious injuries.

All the Addison couple knew was that their two sons had been in some sort of fight.

Their youngest, Nick, 24, was on life support. Hours earlier, his mother heard him whistling in the shower. Now, she was asking if he would live.

The doctor responded, "Do you believe in miracles?"

"I said, 'Yes I do,' " Pam Artman recalled as tears welled in her eyes, " 'but this is going to be a really big one, right?' "

Nickolaus Joseph Artman died 16 hours later on June 12, 2004, after his parents agreed their gregarious son who loved the outdoors, water, animals and acting like a class clown would not want to live in a vegetative state.

So, they let him go - forever.

More than 100 family and friends kept vigil at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove. They had to restrain the Artman's oldest son, Anthony, who was so bloodied and beat up that just rising to hug his dying brother was tough.

There would be no miracle that night. But, more than two years later, some have come.

Two are named Alli and Nick Jr., twins born five months after their father's death.

From a stranger's rosary to a soldier's final act of kindness, the Artmans said others sustain them through their darkest hours.

Yet, no one has or ever will be convicted of their son's violent death despite a court battle.

The other two men in the melee with the brothers outside a late- night Addison burrito joint blamed each other. Authorities focused in on one, but a jury found insufficient evidence to convict him of murder.

That fact haunts the Artman family, who argue they were denied justice.

Art Artman still recalls...

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