An Edmonton man is recovering after a brutal machete attack by some men he had asked not to wake his sleeping children.
The man is still shaken by the attack that occurred on May 2, and too scared to be identified.
The assault happened while he was having a cigarette outside of his home, after he asked a group of men walking past to be quiet because his children were inside sleeping.
"The guy pulled a shotgun on me and asked if I wanted to die," the victim told CTV Edmonton. "That's when I ran away, ran to get them away from the apartment."
He ran toward a convenience store at the corner of 120th Avenue and 82nd Street, but the men pursued and attacked him with a machete, slicing his head open.
He tried to play dead, but the attack continued until he was eventually left lying on the ground, bleeding from the stab wounds.
After the attackers left, he made it to the convenience store, where a woman tried to stop the bleeding with napkins until an ambulance arrived.
He was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital where six nurses worked to stop the bleeding, his mother said.
"You could see where the flesh was hanging off of him," she recalls. "It was horrible."
Four days later, he left hospital with bruises, stitches and his doctors' chilling warning: that if he weighed less, he likely would have died in the attack.
His mother can't help but think of what might have been. She and police are asking anyone with information to come forward.
"Mother's Day just came and passed," she said. "What would I have done without my son?"
With files from CTV Edmonton
