A pair of Good Samaritans have been hailed as heroes for stopping a crazed African mental patient who was running amok with a hammer after escaping custody in Melbourne.
The 28-year-old fled custody during a supervised outing to Northland Shopping Centre on Saturday and was only recaptured when the two brave young men, one Australian and one English, took him down in Carlton after seeing him attacking members of the public and stealing their phones.
Video obtained by 7 News shows the escapee, who is a patient at the medium-security Thomas Embling Hospital forensic mental heath facility, using the hammer to smash the windows of a car stopped at a set of traffic lights before running at another vehicle.
Chef Tom Jones-Davies said he grabbed a meat tenderiser when he saw the hammer-wielding man running past his restaurant.
“I ran in and I was like ‘what can I grab?’ I didn’t want to grab a knife, so I thought, ‘that’ll do, hammer for hammer’,” he said.
He and another man, Tim Barlow, chased the insane thug through the suburb before taking him down when he tried to steal a woman’s bike. The pair performed a citizen’s arrest before other bystanders stepped in and helped restrain the maniac until police arrived.
“He kept struggling a bit but at that point there was four of us holding him down, he wasn’t going anywhere,” Mr Barlow said.
“Now I feel a bit like Batman, putting people back into Arkham Asylum.”
“I didn’t want to catch the hammer to the head, that’s for sure,” Mr Jones-Davies said.
“You never know what you’re going to do until it happens, and I just felt like I had to do something.”
Thomas Embling Hospital is a facility for criminals who are being given psychiatric treatment, and has been criticised in the past for letting patients out on day release.
Header image: Left, the hammer-wielding escapee. Right, the two Good Samaritans (7 News).
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