Ken lef t me for dead but I forgive him now
‘I know you had your own problems’
A MAN who almost died twice after being stabbed 17 times says he forgives his attacker after he received a letter of apology from him and that he will even visit him in prison.
Kristian Shortt was left for dead when Kenneth Broe attacked him in a flat in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, in 2008.
So bad were Mr Shortt’s injuries that gardaí could not tell if he was a man or a woman when they arrived at the scene of the bloodbath.
Broe, from Tallaght in Dublin, was jailed last month at Letterkenny Circuit Court for eight years for the attack.
But last week the attacker wrote to his victim pleading for forgiveness and suggesting that they might even become friends one day.
And remarkably, Mr Shortt, now 37, has now said he forgives his attacker and is looking forward to visiting him in prison.
The trial of Broe heard how he used a pair of scissors to attack his victim – injuring him four times in the neck, three times in the back of the head, three in the chest and also wounded him in the hands and the back. Shortt was taken to Letterkenny General Hospital before being transferred to St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin where he spent two weeks in intensive care and had two life-saving operations.
In the letter to Mr Shortt, Broe said that he has become a changed person and wants to tell the man he almost killed how sorry he is.
He wrote: ‘I want you to know that I have always admired you for the way you turned your life around as I know you had your own problems. You seem like a man of great character and strength and I always felt that me and you could have been good friends if it were not for what happened.’
Broe then offers his apology to his victim and Mr Shortt’s family and says that in time he would like to speak with him face-to-face.
Mr Shortt said he was ‘proud of Ken’ for fighting his own demons and said he forgave the man who almost killed him. ‘I forgive Ken Broe now, of course. How could I not, because he has done something I feel is worthy of the gods? He swallowed his biggest bullet and asked forgiveness of the man he [stabbed] and forgiveness from his family,’ he said. ‘In my eyes that takes great courage and conviction to do that.’