Mother saves woman from attack

Tania Lewis's trip home turned into a nightmare after she picked up a distressed woman and then had her car repeatedly rammed. Photo / Northern Advocate

A mother-of-two is being hailed a hero after saving a woman from an attack by a hammer-wielding man who then pursued the pair in a violent car chase.

But Tania Lewis's heroics have left her out-of-pocket and without transport - her car was rammed by the crazed attacker and is undriveable.

Police say Ms Lewis "put her life on the line" for a stranger during the drama in Whangarei on Tuesday evening.

Ms Lewis had just taken a colleague home after work when she saw a woman running from a nearby property, waving her arms.

"She said 'Please stop, you've got to stop'," Ms Lewis told the Herald yesterday. "I could see she was in shock, she had marks on her neck.

"I said 'Get in the car, you'll be safe with us'. I thought 'I'll just get her to the cop station or something'."

But a man who was chasing the woman lunged at Ms Lewis's car with a hammer as she tried to drive off.

"He looked really scary. He had this real blank look on his face."

As the women - and Ms Lewis's 20-year-old son Kalin - sped down the street, the man gave chase in his own vehicle. "I thought 'I can't stop here because we're going to take the full impact'. He just wanted to kill her.

"I quickly turned into the left lane, heard him screeching and he chased after us down the road and rammed into us from the back."

Ms Lewis slammed on her brakes and the man swerved in front of them.

She drove around him "blaring my horn, hoping that everyone would get out of my way" as they came to a major intersection.

The man tried to ram her again as she turned into another street.

"The force of it pushed us up on to the footpath. I knew we couldn't do anything and my son yelled 'Get out and run'.

"Then he [the attacker] went around the front of our car and rammed into the front of it.

"He saw [the woman] and went up onto the footpath to try to run her over and I've seen that and I've gone and grabbed her and we've just run to get out of the way."

The pair ran onto a property and crouched behind a house.

The man was arrested a short time later.

The loss of Ms Lewis's car, which belongs to her 16-year-old son Levi and was bought with his inheritance from the death of his grandmother, has left the family with no transport.

"He was a little bit upset, but I said 'Look, at least the lady's alive, we're alive, it's just a car'," Ms Lewis said.

Whangarei Acting Sergeant Joanne Rouse described Ms Lewis as a "good samaritan".

"Unfortunately she's ended up putting herself in harm's way but she didn't know that was going to happen.

"Because of what she's done to help someone else out, unless she can get reparation from the court, she is going to be out of pocket because of the damage that's been done to her car."

Sergeant Rouse said Ms Lewis had put her life on the line. "He could have done some serious damage to both of them by ramming the car."

A man, 52, appeared in the Whangarei District Court charged with eight counts of assault with a weapon, injuring with intent to injure, intentional damage and wilful damage. He was remanded in custody until Monday.