Survivor 2's Kel Discusses Bar Attack for the First Time

You may have heard rumors about Survivor 2 contestant Kel Gleason being attacked a couple weeks ago in a bar. A few posts were made about it on Survivor-related message boards, but there were no big news articles. Indeed, some people even started saying the whole thing was a hoax - if it had really happened, it would have been in all the newspapers.

But it wasn't a hoax. Kel was attacked and stabbed repeatedly in a crowded bar while bystanders did nothing to help. He wanted to keep the incident under wraps while he began recuperation, but yesterday he gave RealityNewsOnline his first interview since the attack. He said that he was willing to talk to us because we have talked before and he knows that readers of this website are interested in reality TV, while the generic entertainment show on TV would just be using it to fill time.

Before we got into discussing what happened in the bar, we talked about what he has been doing. As you may recall from our previous interview, Kel had been working for Global TV as their Survivor reporter.

RealityNewsOnline: Were you planning to do commentary for Global again this season?

Kel Gleason: No. Global TV was a great gig. It runs like the U.S. Army - and I mean that in a positive sense. They have so many resources, it makes your life easy. If you need a cameraman or a producer or whatever, you've got one. I've worked for some TV stations without those resources, and it was much more difficult. I loved that, it was really nice to work for a company like that and I'm very thankful to have worked for such a robust company. But I wanted to pursue other things. That's why I left the military - to see what else is out there.

RNO: So what had you been up to?

Kel: I've been doing commercials, taking more acting lessons, taking film auditioning courses with a Canadian flavor, because it is different than American classes. I also have a small part as a villain on the series Mutant X. I've been concentrating on that angle (acting).

RNO: So, where did the attack take place?

Kel: Two female friends had called me and asked to go to a club called the Red Square in Toronto. They said it was Asian Focus Night - a celebration of Asian prosperity in Toronto. I went with them.

RNO: What happened?

Kel: The bar is designed in a peculiar way - a horseshoe pattern. The two major bars are at the ends of the horseshoe, with the dance floor in the middle. I have two friends that work at the bars and I left the two friends I'd come in with for a few minutes to go talk to one of my friends who works at the bar.

As I was talking to her, a man came up to me and asked if I was "that Indian on Survivor." I thought it was kind of a strange way to refer to me - I've been asked many times if I was "the guy from Survivor," but never like this. Still, I answered that, yeah, I was the guy on Survivor.

He walked away and I kept talking to my friend. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he had gone to some other people to verify that I was, indeed, the guy from Survivor. Then he found three people he knew and came back, making a circle around me. I began to wonder why they were surrounding me like this when one of them splashed a drink right into my eyes. It was a strong drink and it temporarily blinded me. Then they suddenly started hitting me in the sides and back of my head, striking me with broken beer bottles, stabbing me repeatedly.

I knew if I stayed where I was, I was going to die, so I flung myself on the bar, trying to get to behind it. They grabbed my legs and kept striking at me, though they couldn't get to my head now. They hit me in the shoulder blades, and gave me a number of cuts plus one stab into my back two inches from my spine.

I kept trying to pull away from them as they continued to grab at me. I finally got to the other side of the bar, bleeding heavily and with my clothes ripped apart. I had lost so much blood that I couldn't get up.