A woman has been detained at Dunedin's Wakari Hospital after allegedly attacking a young father outside a city childcare centre yesterday.
The 27-year-old man said he genuinely feared for his life when a woman "went nuts" and stabbed him while he was dropping his two-year-old son off at
the Russell Street Nursery.
He managed to lock himself in his vehicle and drive off, but not before his attacker slashed his arm with a filleting knife.
Resting at home last night, the man was still in shock and did not want to be named for fear of retaliatory attacks.
He told the Otago Daily Times he was about to unbuckle his son in a passenger seat and take him into the centre at 8.15am when a woman approached and asked to speak to him.
"She wasn't making any sense," he said.
Within seconds, the woman was yelling at him and began to hit him.
"I said I was going to call the police and then she went nuts. She said she was going to kill me.
"I pushed her away and tried to climb back in the truck. She slashed my arm twice as I pulled the door closed and she continued to stab the window once I was inside."
He drove down the street a short distance and then called the police before returning to the scene, concerned for other families dropping off their children.
"Now that I've had time to think about things, I feel a bit freaked out about what could have happened," he said.
Police described the attack as random and "disturbing".
Acting Senior Sergeant Chris George said the area was quickly cordoned off and a woman located at a nearby house.
Tanya Monique Barclay, 39, prostitute, appeared in Dunedin District Court yesterday charged with wounding a man with intent to injure him.
She was remanded in custody to Wakari Hospital and will reappear in court on September 4.
- NZPA
