‘Everything slowed down’: The day a GP saved his colleague from an axe-wielding attacker

GP Dr Fergus McCabe was about to see his second patient of the day when he heard a terrible scream and ran to help, thinking a patient was in distress. 

“But very quickly, before I even reached the door, I realised it was something much, much more.”

It was September 2023 and Christopher Bernard Healey, armed with a metre-long axe, had walked into the GP practice in the northern suburbs of Perth and stormed into the consulting room of Dr Anna Chaney.

A former patient, he had been stalking her for several years.

At the time Dr Chaney was consulting with her patient who was 12 weeks pregnant. 

“He didn’t have a discussion or a debate. He just swung the axe and struck her viciously,” Dr McCabe told the ABC. 

“This patient then jumped up in between Anna and him and tried to grapple with him and grabbed the axe, which slowed him down and also distracted him.”

But by the time Dr McCabe arrived, Dr Chaney was on the floor bleeding and the patient was on top of her, still fighting with Healey.

“I was able to grab the patient, pull her out, and shout ‘go’, and then throw him across the room and get Anna behind me.”

Dr McCabe took the axe off Healey — and Dr Chaney, wounded in the abdomen, managed to crawl down the hallway where staff delivered first aid.

“From that point, this man was a threat to women. I’m a big bloke. He was no threat to me,” says the GP who was raised in Belfast back in the 1970s.

Left in the room together, Dr McCabe debated his next move.

“I decided to sort of tower over him and just very calmly say, ‘Are you going to be a problem to me?’ And he said, ‘No,’ and then he started to try and rationalise his action.” 

Another instinct had gone through Dr McCabe’s mind, which made him emotional as he told the ABC what he contemplated doing. 

“The bit that’s probably for me a little bit confronting was I had made a decision that I would hit him with the axe if he came at Anna again,” Dr McCabe said. 

“Now that that lasted for a second, but that’s not a pleasant feeling.”

A few minutes later, police arrived, but he says he could have easily been mistaken for Healey.

“I still had the axe in my hand, and I was covered in blood,” he said. And then the door opens and this young policeman comes in.”

It was lucky that a colleague had warned the police that a doctor was in the room holding the axe. 

Throughout the ordeal, possibly owing to his medical training, events unfolded slowly, and almost calmly, Dr McCabe said.

“Perhaps in our training as a doctor, when you go to what we call a code blue, when you go to an emergency, everything slows down for me.

“There was no adrenaline. There was no speed. There was no anxiety.”

Healey was jailed for 23 years for attempted murder in 2024.

But this week Dr McCabe was awarded one of 22 individual Commendations for Brave Conduct announced by the Governor-General.

Others included Thomas Gallaway, who rescued a man from a burning car; Ronin Rio, who intervened in a stabbing attack; and then 14-year-old Lachlan Mitchell, who pulled another youth out of the path of a bus.

Dr McCabe says he agreed to talk publicly about what happened because he wanted to highlight the selflessness and bravery displayed by everyone that day – reception staff, Dr Chaney herself, her pregnant patient, the other patients, the doctors and police. 

“The receptionist in our upstairs reception area, who I think at the time was 18 or 19, was running down the stairs to help. The 12-year-old boy who was waiting to see me with his father, his father offered help.

“Bad things only happen because good people do nothing,” Dr McCabe added. “And I think what I saw around me was that everybody did something.

“That’s what I really feel. All of us got that award.”