Victoria police are still searching for the person responsible for a stabbing that occurred over the weekend.
At around 5:45 p.m. on the evening of Dec. 6, a stabbing occurred at the intersection of Gorge Road East and Albany Street during an altercation involving the suspect and multiple others, according to the Victoria Police Department.
One person was taken to hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries after being stabbed and bear sprayed. Two other victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries after being bear sprayed.
The stabbing victim has been identified as Ash Quewezance, a 47-year-old man.
His wife, Haley Sylvester, says Quewezance and her son were sitting inside their truck outside of their apartment complex having a cigarette when one of their neighbours approached them.
Sylvester claims the neighbour told the two of them that a man had just struck his vehicle with a two by four.
Moments later, the man who had struck the vehicle approached the trio and sprayed the neighbour with bear spray.
“My husband and my son jumped out of the truck and they went to grab that guys arm and they tried to take the bear spray away from him and they ended up getting sprayed in the face,” Sylvester said.
She says Quewezance and the suspect began to wrestle before he was stabbed in the throat. The suspect quickly fled the scene.
Quewezance was rushed to hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.
He is currently stable condition, however, he has yet to regain his ability to speak and is expected to remain in hospital for at least 40 days.
Sylvester says they have lived in the neighbourhood for eight years, but in the last few years, it has become far more dangerous.
“I can’t even walk down the road anymore,” Sylvester said. “I used to always walk down the road to the store and I can’t do that anymore without somebody coming up to me and asking me for change if I don’t give it to them they follow me.”
The couple are hoping to move out of the area in the near future, but with Quewezance expected to miss anywhere from four to eight months of work, finding a safer place to live, or even paying their bills will be a struggle for the foreseeable future.
“Ash is able to write, that’s how we are communicating right now. That was one of his first questions, was about our finances. I told him not to worry about it, we’ll get through it,” Sylvester said.
A GoFundMe has been started to help the couple make it through these trying times.
Police identified a man whom they believed at the time to be the suspect and arrested him at a nearby multi-unit temporary housing facility.
However, the man is no longer considered a suspect, but a person of interest.
Investigators are now on the hunt for a suspect described as a man in his 20s or 30s wearing a dark hooded sweater and a dark baseball hat or toque.
To donate to the GoFundMe click here.
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Ben Nesbit
