Mom witnessed knife attack

Seeing a knife attack in a busy Boxing Week Chinook Centre parking lot landed a mother and daughter in the middle of a pepper-spray assault, court heard yesterday. 

[the witness] testified she and her daughter pulled into the lot Dec. 29, 2005, when several men dashed by their van.  She told Court of Queen’s Bench she saw three men holding down and assaulting another man.

“One guy had the man on the ground trying to take his coat off...they were kicking and spraying him,” she said.
“I thought they were horsing around then my daughter said ‘Mom. you’ve got to stop - I think they’re stabbing that guy.”

Twenty-seven-year-old [accused] is charged with attempted murder, while his brother and [another] are accused of aggravated assault. Court heard a 911 tape of [the witness]’s call, in which the woman and her daughter can be heard coughing after they’d stepped into a cloud of pepper spray. In earlier testimony, a registered nurse said she encountered the disoriented victim who’s crumpled in the doorway of a nearby Chapters book store with a heavily bleeding wound to his right chest.

“You could see the blood and air bubbling as it came out,” she said.