Machete attack in Winnipeg leaves man with shattered bones, slashed tendons

WARNING: This article contains descriptions of a machete attack and an image of an injured limb.

One of the only possessions Ariel Martes wasn't robbed of during a brutal machete attack in Winnipeg earlier this month was his Apple watch, and that might have saved his life: He turned its band into a makeshift tourniquet.

Mates, 22, was heading home from work in the early hours of Oct. 11. He got off a bus and was walking along Roch Street in the North Kildonan neighbourhood when two men approached him at the corner of Cheriton Avenue and asked for the time.

He remembers it was exactly 12:04 a.m.

Martes and the two men walked off in different directions but within seconds, the men turned back and went after Martes, chasing him along Cheriton toward Rothesay Street.

At Rothesay, Martes had a gun pointed at him as the men demanded he give them everything he had.

He handed over a cellphone and AirPods, but before he could do anything more one of the men jumped forward and "starts beating me with a machete," Martes told CBC News.

Martes threw up his left arm to block the attack, a move that protected his upper body, but the weapon cut into tendons on his forearm and wrist while also shattering some wrist bones, Martes said.

He was also struck on his left leg but not as severely.

The machete attacker then demanded Martes hand over his backpack, "but I could not raise my arm because my hand was already injured," he said.

Instead of pursuing it more, the men ran off.

"I'm left to bleed in the street one kilometre away from my house," Martes said. "I knocked on two doors and tried to stop two cars but nobody stopped."

He agonizingly made his way home, losing blood along the way, before reaching his house at about 12:20 a.m.

Martes had no strength left to open the door and shouted. His brother found Martes collapsed on the deck.