Editor’s note: The victim’s identity has been removed from this story once the suspect was charged in keeping with Global policy to not identify victims of sexual assault.
Just five days after a southern Alberta woman was viciously attacked on her way to work, the man who found her near-lifeless body is speaking out about what he saw.
“I saw a human body on the ground,” Victor Girbu said Wednesday. “From the beginning, I did not realize it was a human body. When I reversed, then I saw it was a real human body. I was shocked.”
On Friday morning, a 25-year-old Lethbridge woman was walking to work on 6 Avenue S. in Lethbridge when she was brutally assaulted.
READ MORE: ‘It’s just shocking’: friends speak after Lethbridge woman brutally attacked on city street
After being discovered by Girbu in an alley behind his house, she is now recovering in Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre where she is listed in critical but stable condition. The attack has sent shockwaves across both Alberta and the whole country, as police work to determine whether it was targeted or random.
READ MORE: Lethbridge self-defence class gains interest after brutal attack of 25-year-old woman
“She was lying face down on the ground so I couldn’t see if she was alive or not,” Girbu said, adding he called 911 immediately. “(I) usually go to work around 8 a.m. That morning I was going early…Maybe God sent me.
“I didn’t know what to do. I was shocked… It’s terrible.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, police said a suspect had been arrested in connection with the attack but they declined to provide further details.
READ MORE: Police arrest suspect in brutal assault of Alberta woman walking to work
Doctors are keeping the woman in a medically-induced coma to control brain bleeding that resulted from substantial head injuries.
An online fundraiser has been launched to allow people to donate to help her husband, who remains at her side in hospital. The two had only recently married.
Girbu said his encounter with the victim has had an impact on him.
“I have a wife and two kids,” he said. “I worry all the time and every day I call back.
“I can’t imagine sending the wife to work and then you get the phone call and you hear, ‘we found your wife.'”
On Wednesday, Global News reached out to police for comment on the status of their investigation and any potential witnesses.
They said they had no comment.
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