It’s the third violent attack near Hess Village in Hamilton

It’s the third violent attack near Hess Village in Hamilton this week. An 18 year old man was stabbed early this morning. Two groups of men had a fight leaving one man with a stab wound to his head. Police say it’s unclear what weapon was used. He was transported to Hamilton trauma center and is expected to be alright.

Two days ago two teenagers one 17 the other 19 were sent to hospital after a shooting near Hess Village just after midnight. Exactly one week ago a woman in her 30’s was also stabbed near Hess Village and taken to hospital. Just minutes after we posted the news of this morning’s stabbing on our social media we received dozens of comments some reading.

“Geez, another one?” “Hess Village has gotten out of control” “Seems like there’s stabbing slash shootings every other night, this is ridiculous”.

Some say this weeks violence scares them, others say they’re not surprised. A city bylaw requires Hess Village bar owners to pay for additional police officers on weekend nights during patio season. At the beginning of this year, they requested to lower that number from ten to five, because the number of bars and bar goers has decreased.

Lloyd Ferguson chair of the Hamilton police services board says this spike in violence will be discussed in September’s board meeting.

“The paid-duty officers are people who are off duty, they’re on their own time, and they can sign up for this work if they want to and last night none had signed up for Hess Village which is not uncommon because there’s such a big demand for these paid duty officers that are out to other events”.

Police say although there were no paid duty officers in the entertainment district last night, there were still action group officers as well as the mounted unit who regularly patrol Hess village on weekend nights. Detectives are still investigating last nights stabbing.