A man who was seriously injured in a stabbing at Minto has spoken about the "frightening" attack for the first time, recalling how blood squirted from his arms and he thought he was going to die.
Wayne Greenhalgh, 57, was walking along his street on September 10 when a neighbour he had never spoken to allegedly slashed him with a knife and chased him down the road to a nearby hair salon.
Police have charged Ihsas Khan, 22, with committing a terrorist attack and attempted murder over the incident.
Speaking to Channel Nine's A Current Affair, Mr Greenhalgh said he remembered the whole day, including a strange confrontation with his alleged attacker hours before the stabbing.
Mr Greenhalgh, who is known as "Uncle Wayne" to his neighbours, was walking with his wife past Mr Khan's house on the morning of the attack when he said he saw his reclusive neighbour standing on the verandah watching him. He recalled how the 22-year-old appeared to be holding an open maroon-coloured book, possibly a bible, as he walked towards the pair without saying a word.
Mr Greenhalgh said Mr Khan stood directly in front of his face, closed the book, turned around and walked back inside.
"I said to my wife 'Christ, that was weird'... he didn't say a word," Mr Greenhalgh said.
Later that day, he walked past the house again after going to pick something up from his local shopping centre. Once again, he was around 50 metres away when he noticed his neighbour on the verandah.
"He looked at me, and as soon as he [has] seen me he walked inside, come back outside with a red and black backpack, and sat on a small fence," Mr Greenhalgh said. "There's a real little park next to his house, and he sat on the small fence and put the backpack between his legs. As I was about 10 feet away, he opened up the backpack and took out this big massive knife. I thought to myself 'what the hell'?"
It's alleged Mr Khan then attacked the 57-year-old, leaving him with serious injuries to his arms and hands, a punctured lung, and a deep wound through which he lost several litres of blood.
"It was at least two to three inches wide, and the blood was squirting out," he said. "That was frightening. I looked at my hand here and he'd cut this finger all the way down. The bone was hanging out. There were cuts everywhere.
"My arms were squirting blood out. They went down because I just had nothing in my arms, and that's when I, for the first time in my life, turned my back and run."
He said he ran to the nearby hairdressing shop, saw two of his friends in the front yard next door, and shouted for them to help him.
One of the neighbours grabbed a fence paling and ran to intervene, smashing it over the alleged attacker in a confrontation caught on the hairdressing salon's CCTV, as Mr Greenhalgh frantically knocked on the glass sliding door and took refuge inside.
He said if his neighbours hadn't distracted the attacker, he would have been stabbed again.
"Had they have not stopped him, I would have been dead for sure, because I was running away. I couldn't protect myself," he said.
In the salon, Mr Greenhalgh staggered and dripped blood all over the floor but managed to remain on his feet. Incredibly, he said his only worry was how he would clean up the blood that was squirting out of his arms.
"I've never felt that weak in my life. I was having trouble breathing, and the pain was getting very bad, especially in my right arm," he said.
By the time paramedics arrived and applied a tourniquet, he was screaming in pain, but he was still present enough to worry that some of his blood was squirting on a police officer who was helping him.
As he was carried out, he called out to a neighbour to call his wife and daughters. Recalling the moment, he began to tear up. "Family's everything," he said. "That's all I worry about."
"At that stage I closed my eyes and I said to myself 'I'm going now'."
At hospital, he underwent a 10-hour operation on his right arm and required a 6-litre blood transfusion.
However, despite the fact he will have lasting injuries to his hands that will reduce his mobility, he says he carries no mental scars from the incident.
"Thank Christ he picked me and not somebody else. That's what I'm glad about," he said.
"People that know me know that I'm a very stubborn old bugger. I'm not going to let anybody in the world beat me or hurt me or my family. I wasn't going to let him get the better of me."
