Graphical content warning: This story contains details that readers may find disturbing.
In Brampton, Ont. The media personality who was brutally attacked with a machete and ax in the driveway of his home has spoken out for the first time since being ambushed.
On the morning of August 4, local podcast host and real estate agent Joti Singh Mann was getting into his parked Jeep when he was approached by a man wielding an axe.
Video obtained from the scene shows a suspect swinging the blade into the vehicle after Mann closed the car door.
“I was sitting in my car and when I looked my way they broke my window,” Mann said in an exclusive interview with CTV News Toronto on Thursday.
Two other men then appeared, one armed with a machete, and attacked Mann.
Mann said he offered the group the keys to his vehicle, believing the suspects were attempting a carjacking, but that did not stop them from continuing the attack.
The three suspects pulled Mann from his vehicle and drove him to the end of the driveway, continuing to assault him.
“If anyone saw this video they would think I wasn’t alive,” he said.
Mann revealed he was beaten with a machete and an axe, pepper sprayed and Taserized during the attack.
“I was crazy,” he said, recalling the incident. “I had no idea what was happening to me.”
“They didn’t tell me anything.”
The violence only ended when Mann’s mother, Jasmail Mann, fled her home to the scene, causing the assailants to flee. At 3 p.m. Thursday, Jasmail will be honored for her bravery at Brampton City Hall.
“I am alive thanks to my mother and to God,” he said.
After the attack, Mann said he watched the three men outside his home for nearly two hours. He said he assumed they were expecting him.
At the hospital, Mann said he underwent surgery and more than 180 stitches. He also said he had to have a toe amputated, suffered nerve damage in his hand and was nursing a number of broken bones and cuts.
“One of my fingers, I don’t feel it,” he said.
Mann said he had developed post-traumatic stress disorder, had been plagued by nightmares and hadn’t slept more than three hours at a stretch since the attack.
Prior to the incident, Mann received a threat while taping a recent episode of his podcast, Peel Regional Police confirmed. They said a security plan had been put in place and the threat had been reported and was being investigated. At this time, police have not suggested there is a definitive link between the threat and the attack.
In a chat with CP24 earlier in August, Brampton City Councilor Gurpreet Singh Dhillon said Mann’s attack was the third violent incident involving a Punjabi-speaking media personality in Brampton in the past 12 months. .
In one case, the home of a media host was shot at. In another, suspects confronted a media host with a gun as he left his studio.
“Whether you agree with them or not, there should be no violence against them, so hopefully there will be more leads in these investigations as well,” Dhillon said.
Gormley said active investigations were underway for all three incidents and he had no information to suggest Mann’s assault was related to previous incidents targeting other media personalities.
He said the three suspects in Mann’s assault, which he said was attempted murder, wore mostly black clothing, black gloves and surgical masks covering their faces.
Meanwhile, Mann says he still has no idea why the men attacked him.
“God knows,” he said.
With files from CTV Toronto’s Janice Goulding and CP24’s Chris Herhalt.