Emilie Joshi still has nightmares thinking about what happened to her early one morning more than five weeks ago.
“When it happened, the first thing I thought is, he’s going to kill me,” Joshi recalled.
It was around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 19 and Joshi had just finished locking up the Town Pantry at the Chevron gas station in Comox, when quite suddenly, a man pulled a gun on her.
“I had started walking towards my car, I unlocked it with the fob, I walked past this person and I started turning around and that’s when he pulled a gun on me,” said Joshi.
The man demanded her purse, keys and phone. He then pulled out a knife and told her to get in the trunk of her own car.
But the trunk was filled with Joshi’s stuff and as he began pulling stuff out, presumably to make room, she started backing up towards the front of the gas station store.
“I managed to actually get to the front of the building and that’s when he used the knife after pinning me against the building,” said Joshi.
Then, it happened.
“I felt it, just the sharp point on my neck and I could see his arm and saw him go like this,” said Joshi, with a slashing motion of her arm.
The knife attack left a nine centimetre gash on the front of her neck that could have been fatal had it been any deeper.
Covered in blood, Joshi managed called 911 and then her husband.
“It was very clear, she said ‘I’ve been robbed and the robber slit my throat open. I’m going to the hospital,'” recalled her husband, Ashish Joshi.
Doctors managed to closed the wound with about 16 stitches.
Eventually, a 19-year-old named Hunter Paulin was arrested several days later and remains in police custody. He has been charged with aggravated assault, robbery, use of an imitation firearm and unlawful confinement and will make another court appearance before a judge in Nanaimo on March 31.
For Joshi, she still has nightmares about what happened, but is thankful to be alive.
“I have more life to live and I look at my scar as I survived,” she said.
Dean Stoltz
Nicholas Pescod
