‘Give me your keys or I’ll stab you’

• Published date: 18 April 2024
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)

The woman, a staff member at Oamaru Hospital, said a man pulled a knife on her in a ‘‘dark spot’’ of the hospital carpark as she left work on Tuesday night

After unlocking her car and putting her handbag on the back seat, she turned to shut the door and a man suddenly appeared and asked: ‘‘Can I see your car keys?

‘‘I thought, ‘that’s really, really odd’.

‘‘It was so strange and I started to get a wee bit nervous,’’ she said.

The woman said the man then said ‘‘give me your keys or I’ll stab you’’.

‘‘He scared the living s... out of me.

Frozen in fear, she said she was like a ‘‘stunned mullet’’.

‘‘I thought, ‘is this really happening?’ He smashed the keys out of my hands and, when they landed on the ground, I just ran and ran, screaming ‘somebody help me, help’.’’

The woman ran to the hospital emergency department, where a co-worker rushed out and chased the man.

She called out to him, ‘‘watch out, be careful he’s got a knife’’.

She said she had just been talking with work colleagues about the Sydney stabbings before leaving work and could not believe what happened.

‘‘Then to go out and that to happen, I thought, ‘is this some kind of joke?’

‘‘It could have gone so different; it could have gone very badly,’’ she said.

‘‘I felt like I was alone with it all ... When I got to the hospital afterwards, the staff were amazing — they all dropped everything to help me.’’

Now a day after the event, she felt sorry for the man, she said.

‘‘What sort of life has he had and what is life going to be like for him?’’

Senior Sergeant Jason McCoy, of Oamaru, said after the woman was allegedly held at knifepoint the 23-year-old man then went on foot to a neighbouring carpark.

‘‘He has then stolen another woman’s vehicle and driven off,’’ he said.

A man was ‘‘stopped shortly after on Thames St by a police officer...