Two years ago a transient Dunedin man calmly removed two knives from their packaging in a supermarket and launched a horrifying attack. Rob Kidd speaks to the couple who risked their lives to stop him.
Other shoppers push trolleys, browse the shelves, bustle through their daily chores.
He does not.
He stands.
He waits.
Things are different than they were a couple of months ago.
He is different.
Now, a moment only lasts a moment.
When Jorge Fuenzalida was last in Countdown’s central Dunedin store he was lying in a pool of his own blood, his life leaking away through a deep wound in his neck.
He was one of the four victims of 44-year-old Luke James Lambert, whose senseless stabbing rampage shocked the nation.
Mr Fuenzalida — a Corrections officer of 10 years — broke his wrist, suffered a head injury and later discovered one of the knife wounds came within millimetres of a major blood vessel.
His wife Vanessa Andrews bravely came to his aid and was viciously attacked too.
Mr Fuenzalida’s return to the scene of the crime went against all official advice.
"My psychologist said ‘You’re absolutely mad. This is completely against anything I would suggest. If I could think of anything for you not to do, that would be the first one’," Mr Fuenzalida said.
Speaking to the Otago Daily Times on the two-year anniversary of the incident, he retains a sense of humour, despite the daily battles he faces.
But there is a steeliness that belies it, an adamantine strength of character that refuses to be broken.
"I was standing in the place where it happened and I was trying to make sense out of it and in some way saying: ‘Well here I am. I’m still standing’," Mr Fuenzalida said.
"I’m going to go there and I’m going to say ‘You’re not going to beat me’, and he didn’t beat me. And here I am; yes in pain, yes he’s changed my life, yes I have to recreate a new me because the old me has, I guess in a way, died and the new me has to find new ways of living, of enjoying life."
Pain
But it has been a mammoth struggle for the Outram couple.
Their heroism, rushing into peril as almost every other shopper fled, has come at a massive cost.
"Really your daily life is a battle from the moment that you wake up to the moment that you go to sleep," Mr Fuenzalida said.
He underwent surgery on his wrist last week and his eight-hour work week leaves him exhausted.
There are headaches, nerve pain, hearing loss, an aversion to bright light.
Ms Andrews described being in "constant pain", which was compounded by chronic insomnia.
But just as they did in Countdown two years ago, they faced their battles together, united.
"We understand each other really well, so it actually has, for me, intensified my feelings for Vanessa," Mr Fuenzalida said.
"How many wives go to a man with a knife, tell him to ‘please stop’ and put their lives on the line for you? If she hadn’t intervened I would certainly be dead, I’m positive of that."
It was the psychological trauma, though, that was most overwhelming.
Both suffered PTSD, which could be triggered almost at random — a noise, an odour.
Ms Andrews was keen to get back to work but remained haunted by the ordeal.
"You want to be positive, you want to protect that, you do everything you can but it still invades you," she said.
Luke Lambert claimed, after his arrest, that witches had told him to "make a bloodbath". PHOTO: CHRISTINE O’CONNOR
Courage
In two years the unrelenting news cycle has moved on, shocking new crimes usurping previous tragedies, but for the couple "it’s like time has completely stopped".
"Two years has been like yesterday or the day before, because every day you recount what happened," Mr Fuenzalida said.
"You have a short film of a particular action that you saw on that day. For me it was when he was on top of me stabbing me and his face was right here. That is the repetitive part that I can’t get out of my head."
It began with a piercing scream.
Lambert had unwrapped a couple of 7cm knives and attacked a supermarket worker as she stocked a shelf, slashing at her wildly as they tumbled to the floor.
Senior manager Dallas Wilson attempted to restrain the man but was also stabbed.
When Mr Fuenzalida rounded the corner of the aisle he was faced with the chaos and strode into it.
The CCTV of the events, which was played for media in a closed court last year, revealed the absolute frenzy of the incident.
Within seconds, Mr Fuenzalida disarmed Lambert of one of his weapons, unaware he had another.
He and his wife were stabbed repeatedly, in tandem, until off-duty police officers intervened and pinned down the assailant using a chair.
Mr Fuenzalida’s memory of the events was patchy but he recalled a woman beside him hysterical with worry, not knowing how to help.
"I said: ‘Don’t worry, everything is fine’, because at that moment ... I was accepting whatever came after that."
Fate
It was a day of inexplicable misfortune, to be in the worst place at the worst time — but they were also saved by the quirks of luck.
Being just a few hundred metres from the hospital meant ambulances soon arrived.
Nurses ensured the couple had their own room and — after Ms Andrews was twice resuscitated — they lay together.
Their families were informed it was unlikely they would make it through the first night.
But they defied the odds.
"We spent the first few days: ‘Are you alive? Yes, I’m alive. How are you doing?’, pressing the button for the morphine," Mr Fuenzalida said.
It was then, however, that the inevitable, unanswerable questions arose.
Why them? Why then?
"How do you rationalise a situation like this? Well, you don’t. Because if you get immersed in that, you’ll never get out of it," Mr Fuenzalida said.
He and Ms Andrews also paid tribute to his Corrections colleagues, whose offers of support rolled in as the news broke and never stopped.
No regrets
Almost a year after the terrifying incident, Lambert was sentenced in the High Court at Dunedin to 13 years’ imprisonment on four counts of attempted murder.
He will be eligible for parole in November 2027.
Lambert’s name is not uttered in their house and Mr Fuenzalida found it hard to stifle his bitterness.
"I still cannot comprehend how he gets 13 years ... and we have life," he said.
"Our lives are ruined. We have to live with this forever somehow."
So would he have anything to say to Lambert if they ever came face to face?
"‘I’ll see you when you try to get out’, because I’ll be there opposing [parole]."
The glaring questions remain for Mr Fuenzalida and Ms Andrews: were all the struggles and hardship they have endured worth it to save the lives of people they had never met?
Would they do it again?
"Yep, I would," Mr Fuenzalida said.
"Even though I have all this pain, and I suffer all these terrible things, yes I would do it again. And do you know why? Because if we don’t take care of each other, who’s going to do it?"
While he was resolute in his position, an overarching guilt remained.
In the moment Mr Fuenzalida opted to confront an armed man, he dragged his wife into that danger.
"That is probably the hardest thing for me to make sense of," he said.
"You see your wife being stabbed in front of you and you’re not able to react quicker ... or protect her. The guilt that you carry, for me, is immense and that is something I think I will always carry."
But Ms Andrews bears no grudge.
Her decision to follow him, she insisted, was her own.
"I care and love for my husband so I did what I thought I had to do," she said.
"It was my choice to help."
Joy
The couple now live a considerably quieter life and their healing has been helped in part by another duo.
The felines seemed to know just when they were needed.
"Sometimes ... they know you’re down and they come up and they snuggle you," Mr Fuenzalida said.
When asked what kept Mr Fuenzalida and Ms Andrews fighting, what gave them the will to get up each morning, what brought them joy, neither hesitated.
"Each other."
