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MONTREAL – Montreal police are investigating the brutal assault of an 11-year-old girl Sunday night.

Police spokesperson Constable Dany Richer said the victim was “beaten” inside an apartment on Patricia Street in St-Laurent.

The young girl was discovered in an alleyway behind her home. She may have been stabbed and sexually assaulted.

“When she actually woke up, or when she got alert, she was in the alleyway, she did not know how she got to the alleyway,” Richer told Global News.

The girl is recovering in hospital.

Police were called to the scene around 10 p.m. Sunday night.

Detectives arrested a man in his 30s who is believed to be related to the girl.

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“It’s neither the father or the mother. It’s someone in the family or someone close to the family,” Richer confirmed.

Investigators spent the day in the St-Laurent neighbourhood looking in garbage bins and gathering clues.

Area residents told Global News that the young victim was heard banging on her neighbour’s doors, asking for help.

Police said the girl then went to a friend’s home, where she called 9-1-1.

The attack has rattled the quiet west-end neighbourhood.

Shelley Anne Mohammed runs a home daycare a few steps from the scene of the crime and said that she was concerned.

“It’s pretty scary. There’s a lot of kids in this area. I have a daughter too and she’s 12. I don’t want her to know something happened. The fact they found her in an alleyway, I don’t know. I don’t know what is going on.”

The suspect is expected to be arraigned on a number of criminal charges Tuesday at the Montreal Courthouse.