Next month marks the third anniversary of a brutal stranger attack in Vancouver. A man, hiding a machete inside an umbrella, struck two people who were loading luggage into a waiting cab.
A 49-year-old man was hit on the shoulder, and a 38-year-old woman was struck on the back of the neck.
Her name is Casey Janulis, and since then, she’s been suffering in silence. Last week, her attacker, Kenneth Solowan, was sentenced to six years in prison. With the court proceedings now over, Janulis can speak freely.
“I was a happy person, that day I was so happy,” she told Global News in an interview this week. “And that person unfortunately picked me, and that’s why I don’t mind having these conversations because it could have been anybody.”
The attack happened on June 19, 2022, outside the Empress Hotel in the Downtown Eastside.
At the time, Janulis was in the process of moving to the Sunshine Coast, so she had all her belongings with her. She didn’t notice Solowan walking up behind her with a machete, hidden inside an umbrella. The next thing she remembers is a woman yelling.
“One lady, she was screaming. She was the one that said it for everybody, she said, ‘that’s not an umbrella, that’s a machete,’ that’s one of the last things I remember before the ambulance, before they cut all my clothes off,” Janulis said.
The wound across the nape of her neck required dozens of stitches and staples, and she lost a significant amount of blood.
Nearly three years later, Janulis is in constant pain, her speech is impacted, and her hands are numb every morning when she wakes up.
Janulis describes herself as an artist, but said losing feeling in her hands means she now has trouble writing and painting. She also hears a crunching noise when turning her head, comparable to the “sound of Rice Krispies popping.”
In addition to her physical injuries, Janulis also carries emotional ones. She’s terrified of noises and panics whenever someone picks up a knife.
“It’s like you’re waking up from a nightmare every time something triggers you and nobody understands, makes you feel really alone,” she said. “When I’m alone, it’s the most difficult, I didn’t realize the severity of it.”
Alone is how she describes her experience since the attack.
At the time, Janulis had around $25,000 in savings to prepare for her move, but said that money was quickly drained by paying for hotels to stay close to the hospital, followed by various other hotel stays in different cities while trying to find a place to live.
“There was one day I was in Penticton, I was in a hotel, and something snapped when I was trying to rinse,” Janulis said. “I was alone, right? I stayed in the bathtub naked, with my head down, scared to move. It felt like forever, and I’ll never forget that.”
At the end of 2023, she found ‘Ambulance Service Fees’ on her account with the Canada Revenue Agency, the bill was more than $1,000.
Janulis is originally from Ontario and, as such, is not registered under B.C.’s Medical Service Plan. The charge for ambulance transfers for non-MSP beneficiaries is $848, plus $11 per mile. It took a year of calls and emails to Victims Services for the payment to be covered.
Janulis said navigating the paperwork was difficult while she “was like Frankenstein, like a severed head.”
Her injuries meant she was unable to work, and she’s now on disability.
While trying to get her life back on track, Janulis was also receiving updates on her attacker. Solowan was arrested two months after the incident and released on bail in late September.
In a news release on October 7, 2022, the Vancouver Police Department said he was the subject of a B.C.-wide warrant as he “immediately breached his conditions” by disappearing from his residential treatment facility in Surrey.
Solowan had already been missing for more than a week, leaving Janulis terrified he would come after her or her loved ones.
“He could have hurt my family with my last name out there,” she said.
He was re-arrested five days later in Mission, and has been in custody ever since.
Janulis is living on a small boat on Vancouver Island, after being evicted multiple times for failing to pay her rent.
“He’s recovering with breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she said. “While I’m starving to death and can’t get a family doctor, and I’m recovering.”
As a victim, she feels she’s been let down by a system meant to protect her.
“I don’t know who’s more at fault, the guy that did what he did to me, or our system. I’d say my system.”
Janulis is trying to close this chapter in her life, but moving forward is difficult without strong foundations. She said the attack has impacted everybody that she loves through strained relationships.
“I’m not the same anymore,” she said. “It’s complicated to describe, it’s not that I don’t have patience, I’m scared of noises.”