A Vancouver mother is speaking out about “worse and worse” levels of violence in the city after her daughter was attacked by two men Monday morning.
Mirella Gibeau said her daughter, who asked not to be named, was walking in the area of Waterloo and West 10th Street in Kitsilano around 2:30 a.m. when she was attacked by two masked strangers.
Read more: Woman arrested after man fatally stabbed in downtown Vancouver
“She didn’t want to give her phone, so they hit her seven times in the face,” Gibeau told Global News. “What kind of man, what kind of man punches a woman in the face?”
The woman, aged in her 30s, suffered a fractured nose and is “traumatized” and worried her face will never be the same again, her mother said.
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Vancouver police confirmed they are investigating the attack. On average, according to the police, there are four unprovoked attacks by strangers every day in the city.
“I can only imagine that this was an extremely frightening incident for the victim,” said Sgt. Steve Addison in an interview. “We don’t know what their motive was, we don’t know what they intended to do.
Addison said the suspects are believed to be two men in their 20s, but because their faces were covered, there isn’t much of a physical description at this stage of the investigation.
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Gibeau said the men eventually ran off, leaving her daughter on the ground. A taxi driver saw her bleeding and offered to take her to the hospital, she added, but her daughter waited for her father to pick her up.
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The woman was released from the hospital before noon on Tuesday.
“She said when they hit you and all you hear is the fabric of their windbreaker, that’s when you realize how dark and how alone you are,” Gibeau recalled. “We need to feel safe.”
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The mother, who has lived in Vancouver for many years, said she has seen safety in the city steadily “degenerate.” She condemned any political insistence that Vancouver is a safe place.
“I don’t need Vancouver to fix the world, what I need is Vancouver to take care of the people who live here,” she said.
The attack on her daughter follows a particularly violent weekend in the city. According to police, there were six stabbings within 40 hours, one of which was fatal.
Anyone with information about the attack in Kitsilano is asked to contact Vancouver police.
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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