Teenage girl is stabbed in the neck with a boxcutter in random attack as she walked home through a Melbourne park
A 16-year-old girl who was stabbed in the neck with a box cutter has revealed the terrifying moment she thought she was going to die.
Kiara Williams was on her way home from a meeting in Greensborough, in Melbourne’s northeast, when she was randomly attacked by teenagers who were still at large.
She was stabbed in the neck and arm before bleeding out at Greensborough War Memorial Park on a Saturday evening last October.
‘In the back of my mind I thought: am I going to die now? And that was scary,” the teen said 9News.
‘Everything went black, my ears were ringing.’
Ms Williams did not realize she had been stabbed until one of the people she was with pointed out the gushing wound on her neck.
Her terrified mother ran to the park and found her only child semi-conscious.
Kiara Williams, 16, says her scars are a ‘constant reminder’ of the night she almost died
Mrs Williams was rushed to the Royal Melbourne Hospital to undergo treatment and miraculously made a full recovery.
She now has difficulty performing daily tasks, such as going to the store or catching the bus.
The teen says her scars serve as a “constant reminder” of the night she almost died.
“This has completely ruined my mental health,” she said.
‘I just have to keep an eye on everything. So whatever I do, wherever I am, I’m so careful of my surroundings now.”
She said her traumatized mother still “doesn’t know how to deal with it.”
Ms Williams has shared her story in the hope it will prevent a similar incident from happening to another teenager.
She says everyone deserves to live without the fear of being stabbed.
“If you intend to use a weapon, you intend to use it to kill someone or seriously hurt someone, that’s really embarrassing,” she said.
‘It shows how low you live and that you are looking for attention.’
Kiara Williams, 16, was on her way home from a meeting in Greensborough, in Melbourne’s north-east, when she was viciously attacked by two youths
She was stabbed in the neck and arm before bleeding out at Greensborough War Memorial Park (pictured) on a Saturday evening last October.
It comes as gang-related crimes among young people in Victoria are on the rise, with hospital admissions for knife attacks rising above pre-pandemic levels.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton told a parliamentary inquiry last November that youth gangs would become a focus for state police.
He told MPs that police are considering a ban on machetes.
“We’ve certainly talked to the government about that, and a young person shouldn’t be walking around in public with a machete,” Commissioner Patton said.
‘Knife crime is a major problem for us.’
Among children between the ages of 10 and 14, there has been a 192 percent increase in the number of alleged serious burglaries since 2019, from 85 to 249 incidents.
In the same period there was a 131 percent increase in the number of alleged serious burglaries committed by teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17.