Timothy McWatters wore a dress shirt and tie to his day in court, the wounds on his shaved scalp still raw and held together with surgical staples.

A group of young men in Toledo, Ohio, had stabbed McWatters repeatedly in the head with a broken pool cue outside a college bar during a brawl, according to witnesses and surveillance video. At least two others besides McWatters needed hospital attention.

Police arrested four men on suspicion of assault. All were from Saudi Arabia.

But when McWatters arrived at Toledo Municipal Court in early August 2015, he learned they would likely never face prosecution.

The men had fled the country only a day after a company that does business with the Saudi government bailed them out with a $100,000 surety bond.

“Nobody could give me a straight answer,” McWatters, then a fulltime student and UPS employee, recalled in a recent interview. “I was devastated.”

The case is the latest of now nearly two dozen identified by The Oregonian/OregonLive where Saudi nationals accused of serious crimes, including manslaughter and rape, have vanished while under criminal investigation or awaiting trial. Federal law enforcement officials and prosecutors believe Saudi officials directly helped defendants escape in at least two of them.

The revelations have created national attention, prompted lawmakers to seek answers on Capitol Hill and sparked a recent federal investigation.

The case in Toledo offers a rare window into the long-term effects for victims of violent crimes left with little hope of seeing justice after the accused flee to Saudi Arabia. It also stands out because of the breadth of evidence provided by the video, multiple witness accounts and the number of people injured.

"They got to jump on a plane and take off,” said Tom Spiess, who owned the bar, Jake’s Saloon. “I got left with diminished sales and a bad reputation. My employees and customers — who are like family — were beaten to a pulp.”

“WE HONESTLY THOUGHT SOMEBODY WAS GOING TO DIE”

What unfolded at the popular watering hole just blocks from the University of Toledo was described by police, prosecutors and witnesses who spoke with The Oregonian/OregonLive as a brutal attack rather than bar fight.

Security footage captured inside and outside the business appears to verify those accounts.

The July 25, 2015, confrontation began when four Saudi men, one of them a student at the nearby university, apparently refused to stop playing pool at closing time. They rebuffed bar employee Kevin Chung, who, holding a broom and dust pan, can be seen on the video telling the men to wrap up the game.

Chung a few seconds later walks over and takes a glass of beer from a table. The pool players surround him. Another Jake’s employee sees the dispute and rushes over to intervene. A struggle ensues.

Two of the men then turn their pool cues into weapons. “That’s when they started swinging,” recalled Chung, who was bashed over the head several times.

The altercation quickly spilled out through a door near the pool table and into the parking lot behind the bar, where multiple patrons were milling about. Over the next three minutes, the video shows the men repeatedly attacking those who try to stop the melee as well as bystanders.

Clockwise from upper left: Ali Binshafiah, Abdulhadi Binshafiah, Rashed Almarri, Abdulhadi Alras

A woman takes a punch to the face. A man gets thrown to the ground and is beaten and stomped on by the pool players. Others are hit with pool cues, chairs and broken bottles.

“We honestly thought somebody was going to die,” said Chelsea Raker, a registered nurse who said she was also hit in the head with a pool cue.

Yet it was McWatters who suffered the worst injuries of the night. Two of the men jumped him as he tried to take a photo of their car, a black Porsche SUV, and its license plate, witnesses said. One of them held McWatters on the ground.

“The other guy started stabbing him in the head with a broken pool stick,” Raker said. The alleged stabbing occurred by the Porsche and off camera, though McWatters can be seen staggering through the parking lot afterward.

“My hands were completely covered in blood,” recalled McWatters. “I collapsed after that.”

The Saudi men then sped off in the Porsche, the video shows. Toledo police arrived on scene minutes later.

Officers found McWatters lying on a sidewalk and “suffering from a severe laceration to the head,” according to a police report. Doctors at ProMedica Toledo Hospital used 21 staples to close his head wounds.

Chung and Raker also required medical treatment, they said.

“THEN THEY WERE GONE”

Police quickly found the suspects at one of their homes, just a few blocks from Jake’s. They booked Rashed Almarri, Abdulhadi Alras, Ali Binshafiah and Abdulhadi Binshafiah into jail on suspicion of felony assault.

Jail records show all four men were citizens of Saudi Arabia. At the time, Abdulhadi Binshafiah was a sophomore enrolled in the University of Toledo’s College of Business and Innovation as a pre-management major, according to the university. The school has no record of the other men.

The four appeared two days later in Toledo Municipal Court with a private defense attorney, and a judge set their bond at $25,000 each, records show. They were ordered not to contact any of the alleged victims, though it doesn’t appear they were required to surrender their passports as a condition of their release.

Timothy McWatters needed 21 staples to close the wounds he suffered after being attacked with broken pool cue.

On July 31, six days after their arrest, the four defendants posted bail. Court records show that a bail bond insurance company in Florida provided the surety to secure their release.

That business, Bankers Insurance Co., has been used by Saudi Arabian consulates in other criminal cases to bail out defendants in the U.S., court records reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive show.

Neither the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, D.C., nor Cherrefe Kadri, the men’s attorney in Toledo, responded to requests for comment.

The embassy has previously said that, as a policy, the Saudi government will cover the cost of bail for any citizen jailed in the U.S. who asks for assistance. The kingdom has also denied playing any role in helping Saudi citizens escape prosecution in the U.S.

The next day, on Aug. 1, the four men boarded a plane in Chicago — 250 miles west of Toledo — bound for Qatar, said Toledo police Detective Louie Espinosa. There remain active warrants for their arrest, Ohio court records show.

“They were charged. They posted bond. And then they were gone,” said prosecutor Mark Herr. “It didn’t take them long to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Toledo police say they began contacting federal agencies to see how to go about securing the suspects’ return to Ohio. They learned that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia don’t share an extradition treaty, making that prospect improbable if not impossible.

“I was told that, basically, we were not going to get them back,” said Toledo police Detective Michael Murphy.

“IT JUST FINALLY PUT ME OVER THE EDGE”

At that point, the criminal case all but ended for police and prosecutors. Those harmed in the attack continue to grapple with it.

Spiess, who bought Jake’s in 2000, said his business took a hit after the attack. Social media buzzed with warnings that Jake’s wasn’t a safe place to visit. Even longtime patrons stayed away, he said.

Revenue dropped nearly 50 percent and never recovered, Spiess said. He had to cut shifts and eliminate positions even after the school year began. After a few years of flagging sales, Spiess said he sold Jake’s last August.

“It just finally put me over the edge,” he said. “But the hardest part for everyone was the realization that these guys were able to escape as easily as they did and that they would never have to face justice.”

Hospital bills piled up for those injured in the attack. Raker said her emergency room visit required X-rays that set her back $1,900. She paid it off in $50-a-month installments, she said.

McWatters said he missed months of work and never finished school. He still works as a package sorter for UPS. He started seeing a therapist and struggles with anxiety and post-traumatic stress, he said.

“If I hear arguing or a bottle break, my heart rate goes up,” McWatters said. “I go into full panic mode.”

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Read other stories from this series:

He was accused of killing a Portland teen. Feds believe the Saudis helped him escape

Gone: More cases emerge of Saudi students vanishing while facing Oregon charges

Saudi students who vanish before trial span states, decades

Oregon’s Merkley and Wyden seek to punish Saudi Arabia over students who vanished before trial

Oregon’s Wyden prods FBI director for answers about Saudi role in student disappearances

Not just Oregon: Saudi students in at least 8 states, Canada vanish while facing criminal charges

Feds launch investigation into disappearance of Saudi students facing U.S. charges

State Department says it won’t intervene after manslaughter suspect returns to Saudi Arabia