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A Brampton media personality who was violently pulled from his parked vehicle last week and attacked with a machete and axe required 150 stitches, lost a toe due to amputation and will need months of physical rehabilitation to recover, a close friend tells CP24.

On the morning of Aug. 4, Joti Singh Mann was climbing into a Jeep parked in his driveway when he was approached by a man wielding an axe.

Video obtained from the scene shows the axeman swinging the blade into the vehicle’s driver’s side window after Mann shut the door, popping the glass from its frame.

Two other men join in, one armed with a machete.

Brampton assault

They pull Mann from his vehicle, bring him to the end of the driveway and hack and slash him repeatedly.

The violence only ends when a woman identified as Mann’s mother exits the home to render aid.

“She ran out – it was a pure reaction on her part and it certainly contributed to him still being here today,” Peel Regional Police Supt. Sean Gormley told reporters on Thursday.

Mann is a real-estate agent and media personality in Brampton, who hosts a podcast and takes calls from the public.

A friend, Brampton councillor Gurpreet Singh Dhillon says he suffered the loss of a big toe and use of one hand in the attack, and also received 150 stitches.

“Doctors say he will make a recovery but it will take a few months of rehabilitation to regain the use (of his hand.)”

Peel Regional Police Supt. Sean Gormley said they have reason to believe Mann was targeted, but he did not share what information police received to make that conclusion.

Mann’s mother told CP24 that he received a threat while recording a recent episode.

Gormley said police were made aware of that threat and were actively investigating it.

“A safety plan was put in place with victim at the time the threat was reported,” he said.

Dhillon said Mann’s assault is the third violent incident involving a Punjabi language media personality in Brampton in the past 12 months.

In one instance, a media host’s home was fired on. In another, suspects confronted a media host with a gun as he was leaving his studio.

“Whether you agree or disagree with them there shouldn’t be any violence against them so we’re hopeful there are more leads in those investigations as well,” Dhillon said.

Gormley said there are active investigations underway for all three incidents, and he did not have information to suggest Mann’s assault was tied to the earlier incidents targeting other media personalities.

He said the three suspects in Mann’s vicious assault, which he characterized as an attempted murder, wore mostly black clothing, black gloves and surgical masks covering their faces.