One of the seven victims of a multiple stabbing in Vancouver's West End says the nightmare started for him and his wife with a commotion at the front door of their apartment last Thursday night.

“There was a knock at the door," said Neil Gillon, a retiree in his 60s. "It sounded like somebody going down the door.”

Gillon said his wife answered the door to find a woman standing there covered in blood and screaming for help.

"It was desperate," Gillon said. "I believe she had been cut on the stomach. I don't know that. And she said her friend had been cut on the throat."

His wife went out to a hallway see a bloodied, young woman lying on the floor. Gillon followed and found a man hitting his wife.

“I confronted the guy,” Gillon said. “My wife had been bashed, and [he] kept bashing her and bashing her. I struggled with him. Unsuccessfully, I would say, because that's where my memory ends.”

Gillon said he remembers being hit with something and thrown against the elevator doors, then waking up in the hospital.

He said he and his wife believe they were attacked with a hammer.

Accused Jerome Bonneric worked in France before coming to Vancouver. (LinkedIn)

Of the seven stabbed or bludgeoned in the melee, six of them – including Gillon and his wife – required hospitalization. One person remains in hospital in serious condition.

The accused, Jerome Bonneric, 33, is facing 12 counts of assault and will appear in court Monday.

He was not previously known to police and it’s believed a girlfriend of Bonneric lived at the Barclay Street highrise where the attacks took place.

The motive for the attacks is still under investigation.

With files from the CBC's Dan Burritt