‘PACKER SENT ME PACKING’
Fish and chip shop owner selling up after horror accident
STAN Janczyk saw the bright light, a dark tunnel and the most unlikely of gatekeepers – Kerry Packer.
The 65-year-old was clinically dead for four minutes in March last year after a car smashed into him while he was drinking a coffee outside his Kirra Beach fish and chip shop.
After three weeks in an induced coma, four weeks recovery in hospital and more than a year seeing specialists from home, Mr Janczyk can finally tell his story of survival.
“I saw a bright light and a dark tunnel ... and Kerry Packer at the end of it saying ‘go back son there is nothing here’,” he quipped.
STAN Janczyk saw the bright light, a dark tunnel and an imposing figure from the past.
The 65-year-old was clinically dead for four minutes in March last year after he was smashed by a car while he sat at a table drinking coffee outside his Kirra Beach fish and chip shop.
Mr Janczyk was pinned under the car with his hip and knee impaled to his shopfront.
Nearby construction workers, including one “beast of a man”, lifted the car off Mr Janczyk.
He doesn’t remember any of that.
“I saw a bright light and a dark tunnel and that was it ... and Kerry Packer at the end of it saying ‘go back son there is nothing here’,” he quipped yesterday.
An ambulance passing by stopped and paramedics were able to bring him back to life.
After three weeks in an induced coma, four weeks recovery in hospital and now more than a year seeing specialists from home, Mr Janczyk still struggles.
He has difficulty moving his right leg and it continues to swell, movement in his left hand is retarded and constantly feels pain.
Sitting outside his shop, Stan steals glimpses up Musgrave St where the car came from.
Now he and his son Adam, who has put his life on hold to run the family business, want to sell Point Break Fish and Chips.
“We can’t deal with the business. I can’t be running it or working in here,” Stan Janczyk said.
“I don’t want to wait here until I get run over again.
“It was a nice family business but I can’t stand for a long time, I can’t do certain things with my left hand and I still get pain.”
Like his father, Adam, who reopened the store a month after the accident, is also eager to move on with his life.
He runs a professional sailing business called Rubba Dingo, a record company of the same name and is about to release a craft beer labelled Sail Ale.
He said it was time the family moved on from the crash which has been the centre of their life for more than a year.