A Brooklyn shopkeeper was indicted on assault charges Friday for attacking a group of teens with a hammer.

Saleh Ahmed was arrested last month for attacking 15-year-old Bunkless Bovian, sending him to the hospital in critical condition. Ahmed maintains that he was defending a clerk who was being attacked by the teens in his East New York Avenue convenience store. He claims that the teens were armed with a gun and box cutters.

Surveillance video shows Bovian and several other teens assaulted the clerk, and then Salah entered with a hammer and attacked the group. His attorneys believed that the tape would help the Brooklyn District Attorney?s Office to drop the charges against him.

Bovian?s family insists that he was not shoplifting in the store and that he was merely breaking up the fight between the other teens and the clerk. Bovian has been out of school since the attack and suffers from memory loss, seizures and headaches.

Ahmed is out on $35,000 bail. His trial is not expected to begin before 2009.