KEY POINTS:
Three store workers - two with stab wounds - last night held down the teenager who attacked them until police arrived.
The youth and three others were stopped from entering Gilbert Road Discount Liquor in Otara about 5.30pm by shop worker Baljeet Singh.
He said he thought they were underage and drunk.
A scuffle followed and another worker, Baljeet's cousin Varinder Singh Bains, came to help with a hockey stick.
Baljeet was stabbed in the hand and Varinder in the leg but the pair managed to hold on to one of the attackers.
Family members of the two who own the neighbouring dairy tried to stop the other three youths from running off.
But one of the teenagers picked up a sign and hit dairy worker Harvinder Kalkat over the head, inflicting several cuts above and below her eye.
Varinder's wife, Gagandeep Kaur, had just put her 2-year-old daughter in their car and was about to pick up her two other children to head home when she heard the commotion.
She helped hold on to the legs of the youth who had stabbed her husband and cousin until police came.
Her other children, aged 9 and 3, were inside the shop at the time and were so scared they ran into a back room and lay on a bed hugging each other and crying.
Mrs Kaur said a woman later came to the shop to see what had happened and told police her nephews had been involved and they were hiding at her house where they had previously been drinking.
Police last night said they were interviewing several people in relation to the incident.
Varinder, Baljeet, Harvinder and the teenager who was held at the store were taken to Middlemore Hospital last night.
Mrs Kaur said she did not think the offenders were locals as the family knew everyone in the area having owned the shop for three years and her relatives the dairy for 15 years.
The shops were both opened for business soon after the incident and the family said they would not be put off working there.
Prabhjot Kalkat, whose mother Harvinder was injured, said shopkeepers should be allowed to keep weapons behind the counter to defend themselves.
"Shopkeepers have had enough of all this violence," he said.
"We need to be safe. If we didn't have that hockey stick it could have been a lot worse.
"It was lucky they weren't stabbed in the face or chest.
"Those guys could've had a gun."
