‘I could die here’: Photographer recollects Maine marriage ceremony stabbing – NBC Boston

A Massachusetts photographer was significantly injured when he was stabbed throughout a marriage reception final month in Raymond, Maine.

Donald Halsing, 26, was hospitalized for 5 days after the stabbing on May 23. NBC affiliate News Center Maine reported that 26-year-old Andrew Manderson was arrested and charged with elevated aggravated assault.

Still recovering, Halsing informed NBC10 Boston the assault got here out of nowhere — one second, he was snapping images on the dance ground, whereas the following, he was looking for assist as blood spilled onto his digicam.

“I was sitting there in that chair thinking, ‘There’s a real possibility I could die here,'” Halsing stated. “Immediately, I put my hand on my chest here to try and stop the bleeding, get some pressure on it, and started yelling for help.”

Halsing was working on the reception on the Kingsley Pine Campgrounds. He took his final picture at 9:01 p.m., minutes earlier than the stabbing.

“One of the wedding guests came up to me and started asking questions about our business,” he stated.

Halsing stated it was nothing out of the extraordinary, and he tried to clarify his images enterprise to the inquiring visitor by way of the heart beat of the DJ sales space and celebrating friends.

“I thought he was going to reach in his back pocket for his phone, and instead, he didn’t pull out his phone — he pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed me,” he stated.

Manderson, who confronted a choose days later, is a cousin of the bride.

“There was this look in his eyes that he wasn’t quite all there,” Halsing stated.

Halsing’s fiancée, Ashley Wall, was toes away as he struggled to remain awake. She has been his images companion for eight years since they met at Framingham State University, and she or he was serving to him work the marriage.

“People who were around me, they asked, ‘What can we do to help you? What do you need?’ And I said, ‘Please go check on Ashley. Please go check on my fiancée,'” he recalled.

Halsing spent 5 days within the hospital affected by two lacerations to his liver, in the end creating a blood clot in his left leg. But the street to restoration exceeds his bodily wounds as he contemplates his psychological state when he resumes images subsequent 12 months.

“I’m also worried about what lingering effects there might be,” he stated. “If we get out on the dance floor and I start remembering what happened, I don’t know how I’m going to react.”

Halsing nonetheless would not know why he was attacked.

Manderson was launched on $50,000 bail and is due again in courtroom in October.