Andrea Muizelaar just can’t catch a break.

On a cruise in the Caribbean last week, the inaugural winner of Canada's Next Top Model was assaulted with a knife and suffered many bruises.

"The world just stopped," the 21-year-old tells Sun Media. "I didn't have any thought except, 'I'm going to die.'"

Muizelaar and a male friend were a week into their nine-day trip, in their final port of Castries, St. Lucia, when they walked into a neighbourhood on the outskirts of town to take pictures.

The two figured they were safe: they were 10 minutes from the ship, there was a police station nearby, and it was 1:30 in the afternoon.

Once they’d gotten their snaps, they headed back to the ship – but two local men were now following them. A third soon popped out from behind a bush.

"I know [my friend] got hit first," Muizelaar says. "He was punched in the head and they held a knife to his throat."

One man with a knife cut her upper arm and fought with her, leaving bruises, before she broke free and ran for help.

"I thought this was it. No one's going to come,” she says. “We're in a spot of town where they hear people screaming all the time. I thought it was over."

Though some women came out of their homes armed with baseball bats, offering assistance, the attackers had fled by then.

Muizelaar’s friend was later diagnosed with a concussion. Local police and the cruise line were neither helpful nor sympathetic, she says. "I think the cruise ship should have warned us."

This isn’t the first bit of bad luck that’s hit the former model. The $100,000 contract she won on Canada's Next Top Model was subject to income tax, her modelling agency sued her, and she never did land any big shoots.

So she quit modelling last year, moved back in with her parents and enrolled in business school.

"The biggest reason was because I was severely anorexic. My choice was between my health and possible fame,” she says. "And I wasn't making the money everyone thought and people were not treating me like a top model."

She adds, "[The attack was] by far the worst experience of my entire life. Top Model was hard, yeah, but this was my life at stake."

"I'll be okay, but I'll tell you one thing – I'm never going to travel outside Canada again."

melissa@tvguide.ca