Man at Cobalt Hotel Attacked With Hatchet

Why would the cops call a man hit over the head with a hatchet lucky? Because he walked away with only minor injuries. Late Friday night, the 49-year old man was attacked at the seedy Cobalt Hotel at 917 Main St. where he was staying on the Downtown Eastside. A 26 year old man is facing charges for the assault.

Jim A. who has lived at the Cobalt for years was attacked there a few months back. He makes a point of not mixing with the other tenants because many of them are crackheads. But when a native woman asked Jim, a fifty-something caucasian guy, to store a few bags of her belongings in his room, he agreed to help her out. She later returned to pick up the bags and he wasn't there. There has been a misunderstanding. She was angry and told him so later, throwing his dishes and other things around in his room to drive the point home. But Jim is very slow to anger. "I guess she could see she wasn't getting to me," he said. She pulled out a knife and sunk it deep into his forearm. He was spraying blood and as he was pushing the door at the top of the hallway stairs open, he was holding the cut with his opposite hand to stem the flow of blood. He lost his balance and fell, cracking his ribs. He went to the hospital and to this day has a bit of numbness in his hand, although he has made an almost full recovery.

Jim couldn't take a job he had lined up as a forklift operator the next day. He didn't call the cops because he said, "I don't want to be a rat."

Guess what the woman who stabbed him did a week later? She asked him if she could store some of her stuff in his room.