A young man stabbed earlier this month while trying to help a person in distress is finally recovering at home.
Colin Dube-Wheat was walking home through downtown Campbell River around 4:30 am on July 14 when he heard someone calling for help. He found one person unconscious but when he went to help he was stabbed in the chest by another person, who punctured his lung and heart and left him lying on the sidewalk.
He was airlifted to Victoria for open-heart surgery and was finally released from hospital Saturday night.
Jen Fyfe, a close family member, says he has months of recovery ahead but is alive thanks to the doctors and nurses in Victoria.
“Those people gave him his life back Someone tried to take it, and they gave it back,” she says. “He’s walking, he’s going to have a few months where he can’t really do much. He’s just going to have to heal, really.”
Fyfe organized a fundraiser to help his family pay bills and says she was left speechless by the community’s generousity.
She says with Colin out of imminent danger, she’s now concerned about how violent Campbell River’s downtown has become. She says she has compassion for people living on the streets dealing with addiction, and who feel they need to carry weapons to protect themselves, but she says Dube-Wheat was randomly stabbed for trying to help someone in trouble, and better solutions are clearly needed to protect everyone on the streets.
Police say the Campbell River Major Crimes Unit is investigating, but no one has yet been arrested.
