Kaikohe beef farmer John Coleman, 89, pictured in hospital with daughter Sue Coleman by his side. Inset is the CCTV image showing a man on his property.
John Coleman is 89. Early on Saturday he got out of bed to chase a man on his farm. Coleman was taken to hospital after a confrontation and the alleged offender, 27, was taken into custody by police.
It was just before 3am and Northland beef farmer John Coleman, 89, was woken by his wife Lily worried that a stranger was inside their isolated country home.
Ten minutes later, that man was face down in the road. Ten hours later, Kaikohe’s John Coleman was speaking to the Herald from a hospital bed in Whangarei.
The doctor checking Coleman had told him he was Tom Cruise, he says.
And when the Herald told him he was as tough as nails, he says: “Not those modern nails. The modern nails bend.”
It was about 10 hours earlier when daughter Sue Coleman – who lives on the opposite side of Kaikohe – says she was woken by the repeated buzzing of her phone vibrating. She had it set to alert her when the security cameras set up around her parents’ place picked up movement.
“Usually, when I look, it’s a cat. At two o’clock this morning, it was constantly vibrating next to me and I woke thinking it was [vibrating] a bit more than normal.”
She opened the app to see what had set the cameras off.
When she saw a dog, she rang her brother, who lives closer to their parents’ farm. It has been an ongoing nuisance to the Colemans that their sheep – and lambs – have for some time been bothered by dogs.
Then she saw a man on the screen. That was 2.48am. She told the Herald of sitting, shocked, staring at the camera as her “anxiety levels went up”.
She rang her brother again to warn him and then called police on 111. Then, sitting at the edge of her bed, she watched the footage from her parents’ house anxiously, feeling she wanted to vomit, such was the worrying thought of her sleeping parents.
She consciously made the decision not to call them to raise the alarm, hoping that the police would arrive quickly.
About that time, John Coleman was roused from sleep by wife Lily Coleman, after she awoke on hearing a noise inside the house.
Long-time Kaikohe residents, the couple moved there in 1966 and still farm the land they bought then. The house they were sleeping in was one in which their children were raised and both are so well-attuned to its night-time noises that they knew the sounds they heard early on Saturday morning did not belong.
There aren’t too many people in Kaikohe who are strangers to the couple. Their involvement in the community is such that this year they each received a King’s Service Medal for their extraordinary contribution to community and sporting causes.
And last year, they featured in the Herald over their decision to return to neighbouring hapū the land on their property on which sit the remains of the historic Ngāpuhi pā named Pākinga. Their generous gifting led to John and Lily Coleman becoming semifinalists for Senior New Zealander of the Year.
John Coleman rose from bed and went to confront the man.
“It was instinct. I wanted to find out who he was and where he was going.”
Finding the house empty, John Coleman walked outside and climbed into his all-terrain farm buggy, started it up and gave chase.
It might be considered that simply racing after someone at 3am is more than enough for your average 89-year-old to contend with.
Coleman, though, had another issue. Not so many weeks before, while putting in a new electric fence, he received an electric shock that flung his arm back and ruptured five tendons in his shoulder.
Heading down the driveway, it meant he had one arm to steer the buggy with the other cradled across his lap.
At home, Sue Coleman had watched her father leave the house and then move outside the range of the farm’s security cameras. For her, all she could do was wait.
Her father, meanwhile, had steered the buggy down the driveway after the man and eventually on to the road, where he called out “what’s your name”.
By now, John Coleman says he was able to see the face of the man he was following.
“I said, ‘I’m going back to ring the police now I’ve seen you’. I just wanted to identify him.”
John Coleman turned the buggy to head back up the hill towards home. That was when he alleges the man attacked him, leaving Coleman with bruising across his face, a split ear and lip and fractured ribs. The police, who arrived shortly after at the scene, claim the alleged attacker intended to cause grievous bodily harm.
John Coleman and his buggy were racing for the safety of home. Sue Coleman takes up the story on the police’s attendance: “[The man] just froze in the middle of the road.”
As police spilled out of their response cars, the alleged offender raised his hands and just lay flat on the road.
That was 3.05am. And a St John ambulance followed not long after.
“We’re very grateful for how quickly police got there,” Sue Coleman says.
John Coleman made it back home to assure Lily, his wife of almost 60 years, they had both made it through yet another adventure. St John attended to his injuries then got him first to Bay of Islands Hospital at Kawakawa before being sent to Whangārei Hospital.
The police confirmed that at about 2.45am on Saturday, officers received a report of a person entering a property on Kaikohe’s Mataraua Road.
“During the burglary, it is believed one occupant of the house was assaulted by the alleged offender.
“Upon police arrival, a 27-year-old was taken into custody at the scene.”
Police say the alleged offender is due in Whangārei District Court on September 2, charged with injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and burglary.
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