Three Local Toughs Beat Nieman Fellow

Three youths mugged a Nieman Fellow who was returning to his home on Harvard Street late Thursday night, and made off with his wallet and wristwatch.

"One of the kids, who looked reasonably neat, approached me and asked to borrow a quarter," Harry Brandt Ayers, the victim of the attack, said yesterday. "As I reached into my pocket, he hooked his arm around my free arm and threw me to the ground," Ayers, 33, said.

"They took a great deal of pleasure in kicking me in the stomach," he said, "I looked up at one of them. He was scarred and had a kind of demonic expression on his face."

Ayers said he was not seriously hurt, but that he suffered several painful charleyhorses. "Some of my body now looks like eggplant," he said, adding that the attackers had smashed his glasses.

Cambridge police said yesterday that they had not made any progress in the case.