VPD investigates series of unprovoked weekend assaults

Vancouver Police are investigating an unprovoked machete attack in the Downtown Eastside – one of several violent and seemingly random incidents that kept VPD officers busy over the Father’s Day weekend.

A VPD officer was flagged over near the Empress Hotel, at Main and Hastings, around 7 p.m. Sunday for reports of a man wielding a weapon. The officer discovered two people who had been slashed with a machete while loading luggage into a waiting taxi.

The attack left both victims with head and neck wounds that required hospitalization, but both are expected to recover.

The victims told police they did not know the attacker – a heavy-set man in his forties who was wearing a grey t-shirt, a blue raincoat, and carrying an umbrella. He was last seen running south from the crime scene and has not been identified.

The machete attack was one of several seemingly unprovoked weekend incidents now under investigation by VPD.