Steve Fonyo says he’s finally well enough to go home after a violent home invasion left him in a coma in February – but he’s frightened to return to the home where he was beaten and stabbed.
The former Canadian marathon runner is on his feet once more and regaining strength after the Feb. 13 attack, when he was stabbed in the back and beaten into a coma that lasted a month.
An apparent head injury has left his speech slurred and he says doctors have told him he has brain damage, but Fonyo is still hopeful he’ll make a full physical recovery.
“I feel better, physically, health-wise, but I’m really upset,” he said Sunday. “I was in a wheelchair for three months and yesterday is the first day I actually got myself off my feet.”
He’s about to be discharged from the rehabilitation facility he’s been living at, but Fonyo says he refuses to sleep at the home where the terrifying incident occurred.
“I wouldn’t spend the night there, no way,” he said. “I almost died. I came this close to dying, for nothing.”
The 49-year-old says he’s now facing homelessness because he’s being evicted on Tuesday with nowhere to go, though he’s trying to get help finding shelter from victim services.
Police have yet to arrest or charge any suspects in the attack, which has been deemed a targeted crime. Surrey RCMP's Serious Crime Unit confirmed Sunday an investigation was still ongoing and could not release any further details.
Fonyo says he thinks he knows one person who was involved, but not the others.
“I’m pretty upset about it,” he says of the fact that nobody has been charged. “It’s not right. I never hurt anybody ever in my life, I have no reason for this…they took my life away from me.”
Fonyo, who lost a leg to cancer as a boy, rose to fame in the 1980s for running across Canada to raise money for cancer research in the “Journey for Lives.”
His achievements were later overshadowed by a number of criminal convictions in the 90s including assault and fraud, which resulted in the government revoking his Order of Canada.
