KEY POINTS:
Mills Lane in central Auckland is one of the city's less prepossessing streets. A service lane for the Stamford Plaza Hotel and towering office blocks including the BNZ Tower, it is roughly sealed, rutted and patched, and busy with pedestrian and foot traffic, particularly at the end of the day as workers from the offices around it scurry for buses and trains.
It is, in short, an unlikely site for an act of heroism. But that is what took place there on Thursday evening.
Leaving work for the day, Austin Hemmings, a 44-year-old broker manager with an insurance firm, happened upon an assault. He did not know the assailant or the woman who was being punched. But he instantly intervened, tried to stop the attack and was stabbed in the chest. Within seconds, as bystanders tried to stop his bleeding and restart his heart, it was plain that he had paid for his kindness with his life.
Police have described Mr Hemmings as "a good, typical Kiwi bloke" in the wrong place at the wrong time. But even at this early stage, such terminology seems to understate the case. What he did was unquestionably good: he went unthinkingly to the aid of someone who needed him. But lamentably, perhaps, in an age when we are more inured to violence and more likely to avoid getting involved, what Mr Hemmings did was not typical. Neither was he in the wrong place at the wrong time: he was where he was and he did what he had to do.
Now he is gone, leaving a wife without a husband and three teenage children without a father. They - and we - mourn for him. And they should know - as we all know - the only comfort to be had in this sorry and senseless affair: the man they grieve for now may have been a typical Kiwi bloke, but he was a hero. It is cold comfort indeed, but they should be profoundly proud of him.
