Peter Williams (64) ran into the BP Cromwell petrol station after being followed by a carload of youths and verbally and physically attacked. He contacted the Police Communications Centre in Christchurch only to be told police would come to see him later.
Mr Williams had been delivering Otago Daily Times newspapers around Cromwell between 5am and 6am on Saturday in his small ute.
He drove past a car parked in Alpha St and noticed three or four youths "standing around". As he passed them, he saw them making threatening gestures.
Mr Williams said he thought nothing of it and drove on, then he noticed they had started to follow him with their car's lights off.
He drove around with the youths following him, until he got some distance ahead of them, turned into a side street and turned his ute's lights off.
He drove off again "and suddenly they were beside me yelling abuse, and they threw a bottle which hit the driver's door," Mr Williams said.
He drove to the BP petrol station, as he knew there would be people there. He parked, went inside and asked the attendant to call the police.
The youths' car entered the forecourt and one youth got out and tried to climb into his truck. Mr Williams asked what they were doing.
"The guy came round and hit me in the face. Then they sauntered back across the forecourt and drove off with their lights still turned off, so no-one could see the number plate."
The BP attendant was still on the phone to police, so she handed the phone to Mr Williams.
"The comm's centre people said: `Give us your number and we'll send someone round later on'," Mr Williams said.
Mr Williams said he still had a few more paper deliveries to do.
"I was a bit worried about them coming back but I thought: 'No. I'm paid to do a job, so I'll go'," he said.
"I was more worried when I finally got home and really started to think about it. There are other people who do paper runs and a lot of them are the same age group as me, and we should have police there to protect the people who are working during the night and early morning."
Police visited Mr Williams about 8.30am that day. He said they told him they would certainly have come if they had been asked to at the time, but nobody had called them.
Police said yesterday afternoon they were following positive leads in connection with the attack.
