GRIPPING NEW SERIES

SERGEANT Luke Warburton’s night shift had just started when a call came across the radio about a hostage situation in the emergency department at one of Sydney’s biggest hospitals.

The dog squad veteran just happened to be driving past Nepean Hospital at the time and was on the scene just seconds later.

It was January 12, 2016. “As I drive into the emergency department, the doctors, the nurses were waving me in, so I knew something was going on inside the hospital,” he told The Night Watch.

Sgt Warburton decided a busy ED was no place for his police dog Chuck — his trusted companion who years earlier had helped him arrest fugitive Malcolm Naden — so left him in the car. It didn’t take him long to work out what he was dealing with.

A man in one of the treatment bays had a young female doctor in a headlock and a pair of surgical scissors held tightly to her throat.

Two other police officers arrived at the scene as Sgt Warbutron tried to negotiate with the man.

“I had a quick conversation with the two police officers that are outside and decided we had to go in there and take control of the situation and get the hostage out,” he said.

“I gave him a burst of capsicum spray ... in the eyes. We got in there, pushed him into the corner of the cubicle so he couldn’t move away.”

The officers heard two gunshots but it would be another few seconds before Sgt Warburton realised he had been shot — with his own gun.

He was shot in the groin, the bullet exiting his thigh. It had struck his femoral artery, causing excessive blood loss.

Sgt Warburton would undergo five hours of surgery and spend another five weeks in hospital. The man who shot him was found not guilty under the Mental Health Act.