Gay man assaulted in Gatineau cruising area

An Ottawa man says two men assaulted him Aug 6 on a gay cruising trail in Gatineau Park.

Mikey Macfie says he went to the cruising trail around 5:30pm and saw two men he estimates to be in their mid-to-late 20s fishing. One of the men started “giving off signals like he was checking me out and grabbing his crotch,” Macfie says.

But something “didn’t feel right,” he says, so he let the man walk by. He then met another man he is familiar with from the trail, and the two discussed how the fishermen made them uncomfortable.

Macfie and the man parted ways, but, he says, he was soon drawn back by someone yelling, “Don’t touch” in French and the sound of breaking branches.

When Macfie returned to the spot, he says, he saw the larger of the two fishermen chasing his acquaintance. The shorter, “chubbier” man began threatening Macfie with a fishing knife and tried to slash him.

He says the larger fisherman then kicked him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

“Every time I had the opening to retaliate, his friend would start screaming, ‘Non, non’ and threaten me with his knife again,” he alleges.

Macfie says his acquaintance managed to escape. He did, too, but the fishermen soon caught up to him on a bike path.

“I tried to explain that it was just a misunderstanding. My French isn’t that great, but I understand that he didn’t like what goes on in the woods,” he says. “His friend started yelling something, and I thought he was telling him, ‘Let’s go,’ but he was apparently telling him to attack me.”

Fearing he would be stabbed if they got him on the ground again, Macfie yelled at a man passing by on a bike to call the police, but the man just drove by, he says.

He eventually located a family on bicycles who gave him their phone to call police.

Constable Jonathan Hull of the Gatineau police and another officer whose name Macfie does not recall arrived at the scene.

“They asked me if I needed an ambulance. I refused until I realized I couldn’t close my jaw all the way and thought it might be dislocated,” he says.

He was loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher and taken to the Hull hospital, where technicians X-rayed him. He says his jaw is swollen and he has a black eye.

After numerous calls to the Gatineau police, Xtra was told the media relations officer, Pierre Lanthier, is on vacation until Aug 26 and no one else can speak to the incident or whether it’s being investigated.

Macfie has not heard back from the police since the incident.

Xtra is following this story.