Teen stabbed in the neck

Police talk to witnesses to the lunch-time incident. Photo / Supplied

A teenager is in hospital after being stabbed in the neck at a North Shore petrol station yesterday afternoon.

Police were called to the Mobil service station on Verran Rd, Birkdale, at about 12.20pm.

They said a group of three or four men were confronted by the occupants of three cars. An argument broke out which ended with a man stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver "or similar item".

Police said the man was in hospital in a stable condition and his injuries were not life-threatening.

Liban Khoury said her 18-year-old brother Joseph told her he was responsible for the stabbing - after acting to save his brother.

Joseph had gone to the service station to buy bait and ice with his older brother, Eden, so they could go fishing.

The larger group started "hassling" them and refused to stop, so Joseph ran to the car and got a pair of scissors.

Khoury said she had been around the corner, at the BP station on Mokoia Rd, when she saw the police cars, fire engines and ambulances scream past.

"I just had a feeling it was them [her brothers]" she said, adding that racial tensions in the area were rife.

Her family is Maori-Lebanese.

"My brothers have totally gone away from that scene ... they just go fishing now."

But she said there was often trouble. "This is what we have to deal with all the time. We've come from Manurewa in South Auckland, moved to Birkenhead to get away from it and it's the same bloody thing."

The mother of one of the men involved said her son needs stitches in his nose after being "set upon".

She said he was sitting in his car with two others on the station's forecourt when a man came up and smashed the windscreen with his fist, then punched the man in the face through the car's window.

"Then he started punching him in the face and a big rumble has gone on," she said.

Shalom Rimoni, a teenager who lives near the station, saw the victim when he went to the forecourt.

"We went to get some lollies and ended up seeing some cops. We were walking through the middle [of the forecourt] and saw a guy in the ambulance lying there. We saw him holding his neck. I think he had something in the back of his head."

William Kikuchi was sitting in a nearby cafe and saw a car pull out to leave the petrol station then screech to a stop.

He saw a man get out of the car and argue with a group of five men.

"There were five guys arguing with one guy and after a long argument he hopped in the car and another guy hopped in as well. They sped off and one of the five guys threw a bottle at them and they kept driving off.

"After that some police cars sped in and locked it off."

Arvin Lal lives in Beach Haven and often uses the service station. He had never seen any trouble there before.

"It's safe, very safe. Any time of the night we can fill up."

- additional reporting Herald Online