A 50-year-old man is speaking out a year after he was brutally attacked while delivering an order of pizza and wings for Skip the Dishes.
Dean had been delivering food for a few years prior to the incident, often late at night.
Global News has agreed not to use his last name because he fears his attackers could find him, as nobody has been charged in the case yet.
READ MORE: Skip the Dishes driver robbed and stabbed in north Edmonton: police
The incident happened in August 2019, when he went to deliver his last order of the night to a Beaumaris apartment building around 4 a.m. Dean said three men he believed to be in their late 20s suddenly approached him.
“The way they were all stanced behind me, I was like, ‘OK, I’m about to get jumped,'” he recalled.
Trying to lighten the mood, he offered the strangers the food.
“‘Like, it’s free. You don’t have to pay for it.’ I got no response and then I knew, something was wrong.”
The men attacked him as he tried to walk back to the safety of his vehicle.
“They grabbed me from either side of my arms, and then all started swinging,” he said.
Dean didn’t realize it right away, but he’d been stabbed four times. Then he was tripped and fell to the ground.
“That’s when they all started kicking me,” he remembered.
“It was pure violence.”
Dean said the only thing they tried to take was his phone, but he fought hard to hold onto it, thinking he would need to call for help if he was able to get away.
That’s exactly what he did, as the attackers grabbed the pizza and wings and fled in a waiting getaway car.
WATCH: Yaletown pizza delivery driver attacked by stranger
When first responders arrived, Dean said he was bleeding profusely. He was rushed to hospital and into surgery.
“They had to take out my entire stomach to clean out what was left of my spleen that was floating around everywhere because it was ruptured,” he explained.
Dean also had a collapsed lung from one of the stab wounds.
“They told me I was extremely lucky to be alive.”
One year later, Dean still suffers from PTSD and anxiety attacks. Physically, not having a spleen has weakened his immune system. He has developed COPD and congestive heart failure and lost 40 pounds.
“I was a very healthy person, prior to this happening.”
He now needs a walker just to get around and he spends most of the day sleeping, too exhausted to move around.
“This incident has changed my life forever, because my health situation deteriorated ever since then.”
Dean believes the entire thing was set up and that his attackers were the ones who placed the food order that night.
“It could’ve been somebody else. If another driver would have picked it up, it would’ve been them. It’s not like they targeted me specifically. They were going to hurt whoever showed up, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Dean wanted to share his story in the hope that it encourages people to think about the long-term impacts of crime.
“Why do you have to project such violence onto other people?” he said.
“What did you gain from it?”