Matthew Gunton says he's lucky to be alive after a brutal stabbing in east London last week that has left him unable to walk.

Even though it took place in broad daylight, London police are calling it a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The 32-year-old is now recovering at Victoria Hospital, but still has a hard time coming to grips with what happened to him.

“I thought I was dead, I really did. I didn’t think I was going to make it...I can’t sleep, I have nightmares, [I’m throwing up] all the time.”

Last Thursday afternoon he walked into the TD Canada Trust at Dundas and Lyle Streets like he's done many times before.

The trouble started when he left the bank machine. That’s when he says he was approached by people trying to sell him what he thought were stolen iPods and he turned them down.

Gunton describes what happened:

“He said ‘Why don't I take your money from you,’ and I said ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ And I heard click right all in the same sentence and I saw the knife...They were saying ‘I want to kill you, I’m going to kill you, you’re…dead.’ Those words are those are the ones I can’t get out of my mind.

“I have a year-and-a-half-old daughter. I can’t die.”

Within minutes London police arrested and charged a mother and son in connection with the incident.

Thirty-nine-year-old Jennifer Degrace and 21-year-old Aaron Degrace each face several charges including aggravated assault, robbery and uttering threats.

But this isn’t the first time Gunton has come across trouble. In 2005 while leaving a job site in Kitchener late at night he says he was stabbed in the stomach while trying to stop someone from stealing his car.

He says this time is different though “It wasn’t at a place, at a time where you would consider danger. I should be safe at two o’clock in the afternoon walking down a London street and I’m not.”

Gunton is a single father with a 19-month-old daughter at home and has already had his share of hurdles to overcome.

In 2007 he fell almost 40 feet from a roof at a construction site and suffered a stroke. He now gets by on a pension and WSIB payments.

After this incident he says he's seriously thinking of moving.

“It’s just best if I take my family and leave from that area.”