A high school English teacher has downplayed his role in rescuing a 16-year-old student from an attacker near a tent village behind École secondaire de l’Île in Gatineau.



“She’s the one who made the calls to the police,” Daniel McKinney told Postmedia. “In my mind, she’s the hero.”



McKinney, an English teacher at the school, restrained the attacker until police arrived around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday.



Marc Bellfoy, 49, was charged Friday with threatening to kill McKinney and assault in addition to the charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon that were laid on Wednesday.



The teen was still in the hospital Friday recovering from the attack that left her with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.



McKinney said they spoke briefly on the phone but wants to talk to her in more detail once she is released from the hospital.



The traumatic event has deeply impacted McKinney, who has been talking to friends and family to deal with what he’s going through.



“It’s still hard for me to think about it,” McKinney said.



Johanne Légaré, the president of Commission scolaire des Ports de l’Outaouais, said the school board plans to honour McKinney for what she called an act of “total heroism.”



“If he hadn’t walked by, I’d hate to think what would have happened to our student,” Légaré said. “To him, he just did his job.”



Gatineau police said Bellfoy’s last known address was at Le Gîte Ami, a nearby homeless shelter at 85 Rue Morin.



The area where the attack happened is close to a tent village where there have been 50 to 60 dangerous confrontations in the past year between homeless people and students who must pass the camp to go to school, according to Légaré.



Gatineau officials took down the tents along Brewery Creek last fall. More took their place within weeks.



On Wednesday, the small camp was dismantled again, and its residents were told to leave.



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