KEY POINTS:
Wounded Auckland shopkeeper Shashikant Prema and his wife, Damyanti, say they have no intention of giving up the New Windsor dairy and Lotto shop at which he was stabbed repeatedly on Friday.
"At the end of the day you just carry on - that's our work, that's our
business," said the 51-year-old father of three last night from his Auckland City Hospital bed.
Mrs Prema, who has been robbed at gunpoint and was serving customers as usual yesterday, said she initially wondered whether it was worth keeping the business after the latest attack.
But, like her husband, she says she will not let his assailant make her a victim again by selling up or living in fear.
"You are in fear, but you have to get over it," she said.
Mr Prema says he has no idea why he was stabbed around the neck and back about 5.20pm, allegedly by a teenage neighbour who was a regular customer at his shop.
He has a punctured lung and possible nerve damage in his left arm
Sitting up beside his hospital bed and surrounded by family and friends, he told the Herald the attacker did not try to rob him, and there was no history of animosity between him and the youth, who lived just "a few doors down" from the dairy and had been a regular customer since he was small.
Kenyan-born Mr Prema, who migrated to New Zealand in 1976 after attending school in Britain, said he understood an uncle of the teenager had visited the dairy to apologise to his wife for the attack.
He believes he would have been dead had he not run out of the shop after being slashed across the counter on his ear and neck.
"I'm pretty lucky to be alive," he said.
Today, he will have a scan to find out whether a wound to his shoulder has caused nerve damage that may restrict the use of his arm.
Although Mr Prema was stabbed three more times as he fled, he managed to push a bread rack across his shop front and run to a neighbouring takeaway shop.
He and three other people in the takeaway shop locked the door, and the attacker stood looking at the group through the store windows, knife in hand, until the police arrived.
Mr Prema said he had little opportunity to defend himself.
"It happened so quickly, there was nothing much I could do."
But he was concerned at the police decision to charge Otara liquor store owner Virender Singh after a brawl involving youths outside Mr Singh's shop on Tuesday.
"I could have found myself facing charges if I had something to use. But where do you draw the line? That's your life, isn't it?"
A 17-year-old is to reappear in the Auckland District Court today after entering no plea at the weekend to one charge of possessing a knife and one of causing Mr Prema grievous bodily harm. He was remanded in custody.
