Last Thursday evening, 22-year-old Nicolas Poulin tried selling his old cellphone online through Facebook Marketplace.
The meeting with the would-be buyer cost him his phone — and very nearly cost him his life.
At around 9:15 that evening Poulin, who played hockey last year at McGill and is the son of former Montreal Canadien Patrick Poulin, was due to meet the man who wanted to buy his phone on the corner of Jarry St. E. and De Chateaubriand St., five blocks away from the well-travelled entrance to the Jarry metro station in the Villeray district.
But just as the money was about to change hands, his would-be customer slashed him in the throat, and ran off with the phone. According to Facebook post from his mother, Annick Corbeil Poulin, the young man tried to chase down his attacker, but felt a warm sensation in his neck and noticed he was bleeding profusely.
Passersby called 9-1-1, and he was later brought to hospital to get 13 stitches, to close the slash mark he was left with on the left side of his neck.
Corbeil Poulin wrote that he's doing okay now, but that things could have been much worse — she says the attacker missed his carotid artery by barely a millimetre.
"I don't dare imagine the consequences that millimetre could have had," she wrote. "It upsets us to know that people are ready to kill for a damned cellphone."
As of late Thursday afternoon the suspect, said to be a man between 18 and 23 years old, hasn't been apprehended.
Montreal police spokesperson Véronique Dubuc says while such an attack is an extreme case of what can go wrong, there are things you can do to protect yourself when meeting someone after agreeing to a transaction online. First and foremost — make sure the transaction takes place in a public place.
"When you do an exchange, the first thing is, I would do that in a public place where there are a lot of people, just to make sure there are witnesses," Dubuc says. "Of course, I would suggest especially police stations, which are open from 9 a.m. to 7 a.m."
Dubuc also says bringing a friend or a family member along for the exchange can't hurt, either.
And lastly, Dubuc suggests to make payment arrangements without using cash.
"There are other ways to pay," she says. "If you have money with you, you're such an easy victim for someone who has bad intentions. So, I would suggest you pay using an Internet service."
Dubuc also suggests someone who isn't willing to use an online payment service, or meet in a public place, may suggest that someone isn't on the up-and-up.