The scar measures about five inches across the left side of his stomach.

That scar — and about $25,000 in medical bills — is all Preston Patterson has to show for May 19, the night he was gutted outside of The Moon Bar, 821 Iowa St.

“I lost the opportunity to work, my physical abilities,” Patterson, 27-year-old Lawrence resident, said.

He had been helping build and remodel houses before that fateful night. He escaped his eight-day stay at the hospital with his life, but Patterson won’t soon return to construction work.

Because of the incident, he has lost more than 20 pounds and only recently began eating solid food.

His life changed forever when two men, neither of whom he called a friend, decided to get into a fight.

“Never met J.R., never talked to him, never shook his hand,” Patterson said.

Patterson said he and his friend, Marcus Knight, wanted to shoot some pool. They would have arrived before the bar closed if Knight hadn’t forgotten his ID.

Patterson’s girlfriend, however, did see the beginning of the altercation inside the bar.

Nadia Zlatanova said she wasn’t close enough to hear the exchange of words, but that when she turned around, J.R. Giddens, junior forward on the Kansas basketball team, was chasing a smaller white man and trying to hit him from a distance.

The smaller white guy was Jeremiah Creswell, the man who admitted to stabbing Patterson and Knight with a four-inch folding knife.

Zlatanova said Creswell wasn’t trying to fight back.

“Of course they kicked the other guy out,” Zlatanova said. “They weren’t going to kick J.R. out.”

She said she had only heard negative things about Giddens.

“J.R. is not worth getting stabbed for.” Zlatanova said. “Everywhere I go out he’s always out. He acts all stupid when his boys are around because they can take care of him.

“I’m sure if his basketball players weren’t there it would be a different story.”

She and her friends left the bar about 1:30 a.m. because she could tell something was about to happen.

“He just kept standing outside making phone calls right in front of the door.” Zlatanova said, referring to Creswell.

Patterson said he and Knight passed the argument on their way to the door.

“I was being cool. I was like ‘You’re drunk, buddy’” Patterson said. But he didn’t stop to see what was going on.

Patterson said he pulled on the door handle, but because they didn’t make it back to the bar before it closed, it had already been locked. He never even made it inside.

“I heard someone coming up behind me, and that’s when I felt the sharp pain,” Patterson said. “Mark told me I was bleeding.”

He was caught in the middle of a fight he had no stake in.

It happened so fast. He said all he could think was, “They’re going to kill this little fella.”

But Patterson didn’t stick around to find out.

“It just started hurting more and more and more,” he said.

He struggled back to his car, which he drove to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 325 Maine. “My mom told me there was only a few drops of blood in the car,” Patterson said. Most of it was in his lap.

He said the police were hesitant to believe his story because the answers he gave weren’t very detailed.

“I know you’re on parole. You’re going to do what you have to to stay out,” the officer said to him during questioning, Patterson said.

Patterson said “They tried to pull two fast ones on me.”

Charles Branson, Douglas County district attorney, said the department was not in a position to build on any statements at this time because the investigation was ongoing.

Patterson doesn’t think his record should make him an uncredible witness. He’s referring police questions to a lawyer now.

“Everybody has their own opinions on that.” Patterson said. “If they’re level-headed people, they’ll think he’s made mistakes and paid for them.”

Though Patterson has been to prison twice, he’s a changed man. He’s not as temperamental as he once was, he said.

“You think more about the consequences of your actions,” Patterson said about the time he served. “I’m still human. I still have my flaws.”

He hasn’t kept up with most of the media coverage, but the only thing that has really upset him was that Channel 9 used his photo when he asked that it not. Most of what his friends ask him about what they had read, he said, wasn’t true.

He said he thought the whole situation had been blown out of proportion. Especially now that former FBI agents are involved as private investigators.

Patterson said he would most like to put this behind him and return to a normal life. His goal is to enroll at Kaw Valley Votech in the fall and maybe one day become an underwater welder.

He has applied for compensation for his injuries under the Kansas Crime Victim Compensation Act. Whitney Watson, spokesman for Attorney General Phill Kline, said there wasn’t a percentage cap on compensation for medical bills, but that the act paid out up to $25,000.

— Edited by Erin M. Droste