WARNING: This story contains a graphic description of assault.
In the short time after being stabbed five times while trying to close his Corner Brook video game store on Monday, Doug Payne said he wanted to make jokes with medical professionals to lighten the tension.
But he knows how close he was to a much worse outcome.
“You become very self-aware that the time is starting to run low. Things are starting to get dark, things are starting to get cold … You just feel a growing weakness,” he said.
“I should have been dead. The artery should have been hit. I was lucky on all accounts.”
Payne was back at his store, Downtown Entertainment, on Thursday, days after he was the victim of a stabbing at the Valley Mall on Monday afternoon.
Gregg Musakanda, 32, has since been charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, possession of a weapon with a dangerous purpose, breaking and entering and wearing a disguise with intent. He appeared in a Corner Brook courtroom on Thursday via video conference.
Payne shared his account of the stabbing with CBC News on Thursday.
Man charged with aggravated assault following stabbing at Corner Brook mall, police say
He said a man came into the store sometime around 4:45 p.m. on Monday. They spoke about video games for around 15 minutes.
Payne saw the man wearing multiple layers of clothing covered by a black full-body covering, sunglasses and leather combat gloves. He said he didn’t ask questions about the outfit, as a Halloween costume store had recently opened next door.
“There was no lead up to it. As the situation got later and later, you could tell something was off,” Payne said. “I actually left consoles here on the counter, ’cause I figured it was trying to be possibly a theft. If he would have asked, I would have just gave it to him.”
Feeling uncomfortable, Payne says he told the man he was closing the store early. He wouldn’t leave, Payne said, adding he heard him make multiple phone calls to another person trying to get him to the store.
At around 5:15 p.m., Payne said he turned off the lights to close the store. The man was still there, so Payne said he turned to address knocked over games on a shelf to look busy — when he heard a click behind him.
“Saw it coming, but I didn’t have long to react to it … Luckily, he missed my artery, and instead drove [a knife] deep and almost into my throat,” he said.
“He’s like ‘Oh my God, your neck.’ Like, what he did almost didn’t register for a second.”
Over the course of the next few minutes, Payne says he was stabbed five times by a four-inch switchblade. He was stabbed once through his neck, his shoulder, his side, across his stomach and across his lower back.
Payne said he worked his way through an aisle — and was kept from the door by the man blocking it. That’s when he says he decided to try and plow his way to the door.
“I just had to put my shoulder down. I knew I was going to get stabbed, I could kind of direct it to somewhere else,” he said.
Payne said he threw multiple kicks after falling to the ground to protect himself. A final, two-legged kick sent his attacker into the store’s counter, he added, which gave Payne time to get outside.
“The second [the attacker] stepped outside, he put the knife away and just dropped the whole act and just walked like nothing had happened,” Payne said.
His attacker fled on foot, according to police, and was arrested at a residence on Valley Road around 7 p.m. Monday.
Payne said he worked to get to a nearby grocery store for help, but two regular customers of his store had appeared in the parking lot.
“The sidewalks were covered. I was head to toe covered in blood. Head to toe,” added Payne. “By sheer, dumb luck … an ambulance just happened to be coming down here to go buy popcorn at Sobeys.”
Payne said he was left with 15 stitches, several internal injuries and bone and tendon damage in his shoulder and one of his knees.
He’s thankful for the community support that has come his way, but believes he could have done more to make sure people felt safer.
“I don’t think I did right, ’cause I should have stopped him. But I did what I could to survive.”
And while he understands an aggravated assault charge and the processes of the justice system, Payne says, in his view, his attacker wasn’t trying to rob someone.
“There was never intention to rob. He had every intention to kill.”
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