Saskatoon dad picking up movie passes stabbed 5 times by stranger

Kelly Lutz is stiff, sore but thankful to be alive after he was stabbed five times during a random attack in downtown Saskatoon last month.
 
It was late afternoon on Friday, Feb. 13 when Kelly Lutz parked his vehicle and started walking to the Scotiabank Theatre to buy some movie passes for his kids. He said he noticed a disheveled man walking down the street and heard him say “come here.”

“And I look over my left shoulder and he’s running, right across the street towards me. His face looks like it’s in a rage,” he said.

His heart pounding, Lutz scrambled inside the theatre’s vestibule area, thinking he would be safe inside. But when he reached for the theatre’s main doors, he said he was grabbed from behind.

“I see him swinging and I get hit in the back three or four times really hard, and I actually feel it,” Lutz said.
 
“At that point I thought he’d actually punched me, I mean, I didn’t know what it was like to be stabbed at all. But I really felt he just hit me really hard in the back.”
 
Lutz said he stumbled outside and was stabbed twice more–once in the back and another in the hand–before the man ran away.

“I put my left hand behind my back and I have a thick winter coat on. I pull it out and it’s full of blood; it’s dripping blood. People are yelling, ‘You’ve been stabbed, get down’ so now it’s sinking in.”
 
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Lutz remembers someone saying that the man who stabbed him had been seen before at The Lighthouse. The supported living residence and emergency shelter is across the street from Scotiabank Theatre, at the corner of 20th Street and 2nd Avenue.
 
Police have charged Julian McKay, 40, with aggravated assault. DeeAnn Mercier, director of communications at The Lighthouse, confirms McKay had used the shelter twice last month. He was also found roaming the halls the day Lutz was stabbed.
 
“Our staff found him knocking on a resident’s door. The resident wasn’t home, and he was escorted off the property,” she said.
 
Lutz said he’s not against The Lighthouse; he just wants people to feel safe downtown. It’s problematic when people who are causing trouble at the shelter have to be put back out on the street, he said.
 
“Maybe thinking of doing some other private security in their mandate or their funding agencies, try to fund for that purpose,” Lutz suggested, acknowledging that The Lighthouse is not fully responsible for what happened to him.

Mercier admits she does receive complaints about panhandling in the area, but said it’s not necessarily residents of The Lighthouse. However, part of their program includes educating residents about better ways to earn money, Mercier said.

“We are neighbours and we are part of the downtown community and we definitely need to look at what we can do to make sure everyone is safe,” she said.
 
 “I think more police officers definitely could be downtown. That is a very busy intersection.”

Police report states attack did not happen in theatre: Cineplex

Mercier said the theatre is estimating that one million people will walk through its doors this year. Pat Marshall, vice-president of communications with Cineplex, said the movie theatre has security in place and has added extra security since Lutz was stabbed.
 
“We understand what’s happening in that community and we’re working closely with everyone in that area,” she said. “It was certainly a random act of violence that could have happened anywhere.”
 
But Lutz said he’s never seen security at the theatre. 

According to Marshall, the police report states that the attack happened outside the theatre, not in the vestibule. That’s city property and therefore up to police to enforce, she said.

“Regardless of where it happened, the most important piece here is that Mr. Lutz is getting better and on the road to recovery,” Marshall said.

Lutz said he’ll be stiff for awhile but is grateful that the knife only nicked his lungs.  
 
“To be very unlucky on a Friday the 13, to be very lucky with what had happened,” he said.

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