Knife attack victim saved by Bible
Published: October 13, 2005
I interviewed a young man by phone because, for his safety, he’s not allowed to give live interviews (by his organization Youth for Christ).
His story, non-the-less, is incredible alone.
Shaun Sparrow is a 22 year old from South Africa (he has been in Toronto for 7 years but you can still hear a little bit of his accent). He works for Youth for Christ running a sports outreach program with kids from low income families in government housing (very high drug and alcohol use, and typically gang participation). There are also Christian families in the area with strong morals, so the groups frequently clash.
Shaun has worked with 5 different communities, and with recruits from violent gangs that constantly fight each other. The main two gangs call themselves the Bloods and the Crypts. They pay 10 and 12 year olds to leave school and join them. (When they’re that young it becomes a lifestyle).
Shaun and his other youth leaders set up a basketball program to get gang members, especially the young ones, to play in a basketball league so they can have fun together and not fight.
Through the summer Shaun and his co-workers were named in 5 death threats to stop working with the young gang members or they would be killed.
They hadn’t worked out of the church for 3 weeks, and Shaun started a new program hanging out for a couple of hours a day in parks to keep the connection he had with the younger memhers.
Last Saturday (Sept 30th) around 2:30 at the park on his day off, he sat down while he talked to a friend on his cell phone.
He took his bible out to look at a picture in the back, and for some reason put the bible in his pocket.
He was approached by 2 guys, and something didnt’ look right. Shaun’s friend on the phone told him to get out of there. He stood up and started to walk out because he didn’t want to bring problems onto younger children there. One of the accosters grabbed him by the arm and asked if he was Shaun Sparrow and when he said yes, about a 6′2 attacker ‘punched’ him in the stomach. He was winded and dropped to the ground, biting his lip in the process, causing it to bleed.
As he looked after his attackers, he saw one was carrying a knife. He looked down at his stomach and when he saw blood on his shirt he realized he’d been stabbed.
He couldn’t find a wound, but his jacket had a hole right at the pocket where the knife had gone in, and he pulled his bible from that pocket. There was a knife cut in it almost right through and he wasn’t injured except for the bitten lip. That’s where the blood was from.
The police told him if the bible hadn’t been there because of the location of the stabbing attempt, he would have been dead.
as reported by Christy Burton
News Director
Ontario’s Christian Superstation
LIFE 100.3
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