Bashing victim gets to thank man who rebuilt his face
Three years after being beaten to a pulp for trying to help a friend, Pete Fisher has met the plastic surgeon who put his face back together.
In an heartfelt meeting at the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute in Newtown, Wellington, yesterday, Fisher thanked top plastic surgeon Swee Tan, who spent five hours piecing together his face like a jigsaw puzzle after it was all but destroyed in an attack.
‘‘I’ve always wanted to meet the man behind the scalpel,’’ Fisher said. ‘‘My partner was a bit disappointed I didn’t come out like George Clooney.’’
Fisher was savagely beaten in October 2012 in his hometown, Martinborough, after going to the aid of a friend’s daughter. He spent 78 days in hospital and in rehabilitation, learning to walk again after a brain injury and stroke.
He suffered extensive fractures to his face, including broken cheekbones, a broken and dislodged upper jaw, a badly broken nose, broken eye sockets and three dislodged teeth. He was taken by ambulance to Wellington Hospital, and Tan operated on him a week later.
Tan said the only time he had previously seen such severe injuries was on plane crash victims.
Fisher’s father, Brian, said his son was unrecognisable when he came into intensive care, but as soon as he returned from under Tan’s scalpel they could see their son again. ‘‘It’s a bit therapeutic to meet and thank you personally,’’ he told Tan.
Despite the extensive injuries, Tan didn’t leave a single scar on Fisher’s face. To the naked eye, one would never know what he had been through, or that his face was held together by titanium plates.
‘‘The fact he was injured not by accident, deliberately, really upset me,’’ Tan said. ‘‘I’m very impressed by how far you’ve come. You had courage, and your courage carried on through your recovery,’’ he told Fisher.
Wellington Free Ambulance paramedic Rebecca Dickinson, who tended to Fisher on the night of the attack, said his facial injuries were so bad he ran the risk of drowning in his own blood.
‘‘It was the hardest job of my career so far,’’ she said at yesterday’s meeting.
Fisher, who does not remember anything of the night and now walks with a limp, said the accounts from Tan, Dickinson and his family helped him piece together what happened.
He did rehabilitation for two years after the attack, and has been working at Mitre 10 part-time for the past year. ‘‘It’s good for the brain, good to meet people.’’
He still volunteers for the Martinborough Fire Service and has been training with the Greytown road rescue team.
On the night of the attack, he had gone to a gathering of 14-yearolds in Martinborough at the request of a friend’s daughter to kick out Milton Haira, who was not welcome there. When Fisher confronted Haira and another man, Jack Ffrost, he was brutally assaulted by Haira.
At the men’s trial in May this year, Fisher’s brother spoke of the pain the family went through after thinking the worst: whether they would have to turn off life support.
Pete Fisher said he tried to stay away from the court case because he knew Haira’s family and did not want to ‘‘rub it in their noses’’.
‘‘Being from a small community, I knew the family through working at the vineyards, but the sentencing brought closure for me and the family,’’ he said.
Haira, 27, was sentenced to six years and six months in jail.
Ffrost, who admitted assault with intent to injure, was sentenced to community work.