Teen slashed with meat cleaver, mown down in brutal drive-through incident
Updated ,first published
It was an attack so brutal it prompted one veteran police officer to say the attackers lacked humanity.
He said their behavior reminded him of rabid dogs.
At around 10pm on Tuesday night, opposite the iconic triangle in the heart of St Kilda, two men, one of them a 17-year-old boy, headed to McDonald’s for a late meal.
As the white Kia they rented from Flexicar was heading towards the car on the Esplanade, three men in the stolen gray Mazda rear-ended them.
A man jumped out of the Mazda with a cleaver, hit the Kia, and stabbed the 17-year-old boy near the passenger seat with a knife.
The attack was so violent that the knife left at the scene was broken in half.
The occupants of the Kia took off from McDonald’s towards the Esplanade, with the Mazda in pursuit.
Mazda ‘flew away’ as witness Joseph Ferguson was about to enter fast-food restaurant [of] “He went to McDonald’s and went over the tram tracks and started rear-ending the Kia.”
Ferguson could see through the Kia’s dented rear bumper that the Mazda was already targeting it near the McDonald’s drive-in.
The Kia tried to escape down Acland Street but the Mazda followed the car the whole way.
When the pair in the Kia arrived on St Leonards Avenue, they came across a dead end.
Locals heard tires squealing and saw both cars speeding down the quiet, leafy street.
“First [car] He was driving fast, but not crazy. I could only see it [from behind my fence] “I’m trying to figure out how to get out because I realized it was a dead end,” said an eyewitness who asked not to be named. Age. “Then I saw the other car flying down the street.”
Cornered, the occupants of the Kia jumped out of the car and tried to escape on foot, but the three pursuers abandoned their stolen Mazda and took control of the empty Kia.
They then ran over the injured young man twice with their own car.
In the video taken by witnesses, the Kia with its crumpled rear bumper can be seen moving back and forth on the street several times.
An eyewitness said the attackers also got out of the car and stabbed the victim in the face. Both the victim and his friend, the primary driver of the Kia, managed to escape.
Two of the attackers sped off while in the Kia, while the third jumped a nearby fence to escape before police arrived. The car was later found abandoned in nearby Fitzroy Street.
An eyewitness said the driver of the Kia ran to the end of the cul-de-sac and jumped over a fence.
“Obviously, it was coming from the car that got hit. He was pretty frantic, scared, but he didn’t stop. He just said, ‘Call the police,'” the witness said.
The 17-year-old was found seriously injured in St Leonards Avenue and was taken to Alfred hospital in a non-life-threatening condition.
Detective Inspector Mark Patrick said it was a sickening attack.
“These are serious crimes. The criminals have no humanity,” Patrick said. “[It’s] behavior like dogs, like rabid dogs.”
Ferguson, who witnessed the Mazda rear-end a Kia near McDonald’s, said such crimes were becoming more common in Victoria, particularly St Kilda. In October, two teenagers were slashed with machetes in Luna Park, just 110 meters from McDonald’s.
“As someone who lived in the Victorian era, I think it became almost normal for something like this to happen once a week,” he said.
“I think a lot of people these days are fed up with people coming out as repeat offenders. And even if we haven’t found a long-term solution, at least temporarily remove some of these people until we figure out how to deal with them, how to help them.”
Anyone with information or CCTV footage should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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Angus Delaney is a reporter for The Age. Email him at angus.delaney@theage.com.au or contact him securely on Signal at Angusdelaney.31.Connect via email.
