Victoria police are appealing to the public to help find a man who violently attacked a woman with a club and stole her purse.

On Sunday, the 24-year-old Saanich woman was walking home along Quadra near Finlayson Street around 11 p.m. when a man struck her three times with a half-metre-long bat or club.

She suffered a cut to the back of her head that required multiple stitches.

"The total taken was only $10 in loose change and maybe one small bill from her purse," said Det. Jamie McRae, appealing to anyone who may have found the distinctively coloured purse to contact VicPD.

"We may be able to gain evidence from the purse," he said.

The woman was struck in the legs before a demand was ever made for the purse, a rare but high level of violence for stranger-on-stranger incidents, McRae said.

In a separate incident last Friday (Sept. 14), a woman waiting at a bus stop in the 800-block of Vernon Ave. in Saanich had her cell phone stolen by a man wielding an undisclosed weapon.

Police stopped short of making a connection between the two cases.

"We're not prepared at this point to say there's some links or there isn't any links," McRae said.

VicPD is appealing to two potential witnesses, both of whom were waiting to board a southbound bus on Quadra Street at the time of the mugging, to contact police.

The suspect is described as a white man in his 30's, between 5'5 and 5'7 with a medium build.

He was wearing a grey hoodie, khaki-coloured pants, work boots and a black scarf or bandana to cover his face.

Anyone with information is asked to contact VicPD at 250-995-7654 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

dpalmer@vicnews.com