CALLOUS GRUBS
A pack of mongrels grabbed, slashed, robbed and threw this nurse in the boot of his car in a random pre-dawn attack while he was just doing his job
GRADUATE nurse Joe Brooker, 25, is recovering this morning after being kidnapped and stabbed while getting an energy drink from his car during a shift at Pindara Hospital, Benowa, early yesterday. Police continued the hunt last night for three of the four masked attackers.
GARY MacDougal was woken by what sounded like people fighting outside his Ashmore home.
Moments later a car smashed through the fence and a man covered in blood clambered out of the boot.
Even with his family’s pet dogs on high alert at the door, the father of three was guarded in opening up because one of his daughters was asleep nearby on a couch. His wife, Samantha, also woken by the commotion, stepped outside to deal with what she thought might be a drunk driver.
“I got up and there was a young man covered in blood, saying ‘Can you help me’?” Ms MacDougal told the Bulletin.
The man – 25-year-old Joe Brooker – then told a story of being held at gunpoint, stabbed, robbed and stuffed into the boot of his own car.
He appeared to be in shock when he found himself at the MacDougals’ Kurrambee Ave address.
“I just thought it was a drunk (person),” Mr MacDougal said.
“When he first started telling the story it sounded a bit far-fetched with the guns, putting him in the boot and the knives, but he was clearly shaken.”
Ms MacDougal acted quickly, giving the dazed young man an icepack and calling emergency services.
“The violence is quite overwhelming,” she said of his story. “I sat with him and held his hand.”
Ms MacDougal said the Pindara Private Hospital nurse told her that he was grabbing an energy drink from his car during his break around 3.30am yesterday when he was accosted by four men wearing balaclavas.
His car was just 50m from the hospital in a parking area at the Sir Bruce Small park.
Mr Brooker told them one of the attackers held a gun to his head and demanded his phone and wallet. Two others held knives.
They shoved him into the boot of his car and took him to an ATM at Parklands Dve, Parkwood, where he was forced to withdraw $500.
Mr Brooker was then put back in the boot. The car was driven to Ashmore where the men pushed the car into the Kurrambee Ave fence.
Ms MacDougal said Mr Brooker managed to free himself despite multiple stab wounds to his body.
Paramedics took him to the Gold Coast University Hospital in a stable condition.
It is understood that after
abandoning Mr Brooker’s car, the four attackers took a white Toyota Prius and crashed it on Ashmore Rd just before 5am.
Ashmore Rd resident Glenn Campbell said his family heard a loud bang and went to investigate.
“(One of the four) flung a knife into the grass and just kept saying: ‘Where’s me mate’?” he said.
Mr Campbell said a man who climbed out of the car was injured and bleeding from his head as well as his back.
He said the man involved in the crash “didn’t look well” and had been lying in the gutter in a foetal position and “might have been off his head”.
Mr Campbell said he tried to turn the car engine off but could not, so left it as it started smoking.
The injured man allegedly tried to leave the scene.
Police said one of the four was located not far away in Mingaletta Dve.
Pindara Private Hospital CEO Trish Hogan said the hospital was “very upset with the incident and we’re making sure that the nurse and his family were well cared for and looked after”.
The incident shocked Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union secretary Beth Mohle, who described it as serious and bizarre.
“One would hope that outside a hospital it’s safe. That’s an issue we will take further,” she said. “We are extremely concerned something like this could happen, it’s gobsmacking. Everybody needs to be cognisant of their safety, especially on night duty.”