Sword attack still unsettles residents of western P.E.I. a year later

It was an unusual act of violence that pierced a calm September evening on a secluded beach in western P.E.I., leaving a community unnerved and searching for answers.

Just over one year later, no answers have come, and the culprit is still at large. 

“It really is hard to believe that it’s been a year already, and I think when that happened, it just caught everybody so off-guard,” said Tignish resident Michele MacDonald.

“This gentle Island didn’t seem so gentle anymore, and just not to have any closure on that… People are more aware of their surroundings.” 

At 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 1, 2023, a man wielding a sword approached three people on a small beach at Seacow Pond, near Tignish. About five feet 10 inches tall, he was wearing a dark surgical mask and possibly a green hoodie.

He attacked two of the people with the sword, seriously injuring a 42-year-old woman. A youth was also hurt. 

The P.E.I. RCMP issued an emergency alert to people in the area, asking them to stay inside and lock their doors while they worked to find and arrest who was responsible.

But as the days and months went on, despite the investigators’ efforts and numerous tips from the public, the attacker remained elusive. 

We didn’t feel comfortable being alone there anymore.— Michele MacDonald

“We were scared to go to work. We locked our doors. We put signs up. There wasn’t really any way for the tourists to know what happened,” said MacDonald, who worked at a gift shop in Tignish at the time. 

“We didn’t feel comfortable being alone there anymore.”

Victim’s feelings about strangers have changed

CBC News reached out to the family of the woman who was injured, but they said she’s not ready to talk about what happened that night.

Her mother did say that it’s “sad to see how this awful incident changed our daughter’s feelings towards strangers.”

A year ago, RCMP said the lack of any apparent motive was leading them to believe the attack was random. In an interview this week, however, they said they don’t believe there’s any reason to be concerned for public safety.

Despite that, the Seacow Pond Beach attack remains a “top-priority investigation,” said RCMP media relations officer Cpl. Gavin Moore.

The person that did this … they think about it when they lay their head on the pillow and go to sleep at night.— Allan McInnis, mayor of Tignish

“When we investigate an incident like this, there are steps that police take and we can’t always share those details of an investigation,” he said.  

“Islanders provided a lot of tips, a lot of information, and we continue to ask Islanders to provide that type of information. This, again, is a serious incident and with that comes a serious effort from the RCMP on this investigation. So that means looking into even the smallest of details. We’re looking for the smallest pieces of evidence.”

Allan McInnis, the mayor of Tignish, said he hopes the suspect’s guilty conscience will result in a surrender to police at some point. 

“The person that did this — you know, I think about this quite often. I think, they have to get up in the morning and they think about what they’d done, they think about it pretty well all day, and then they think about it when they lay their head on the pillow and go to sleep at night,” he said. 

“Right now, they’re going through more pain, I would assume, than the person who was attacked.” 

‘That concern is still there’

The area’s member of Parliament, Bobby Morrissey, thinks the attacker needs to be found for the entire community to feel a sense of peace. 

“It certainly was a shock that rattled the community to a large degree and that concern is still there,” Morrissey said. “The community is moving on, but until an arrest is made, it’s still in the back of people’s minds: ‘Could it happen again?'”

Many residents in the area lock their doors now, something they never felt the need for before the sword attack.  

“A lot of people were very scared at the time. So let’s hope, ‘never again,'” MacDonald said.

“There’s, I’m sure, been healing already, but it’s still the unknown … of no closure.”