Teen victim in park 'bloodbath' speaks out

Sharleen Subritzky helped a badly bashed woman who knocked on her door. Photo / Doug Sherring

One of two teens severely injured in a brutal assault in an Auckland park has spoken for the first time of the night he almost died.

Nathaniel Morrow, 19, and his friend Dana McCarthy, 17, sustained horrific injuries at the hands of mystery assailants in Starling Park, Ranui.

Morrow was rescued at dawn by dog walker Gary McNelly, who called for an ambulance. McCarthy was found a short while later on a doorstep.

Sharleen Subritzky, the woman who found her, said it was "a total bloodbath".

Speaking from hospital yesterday, Morrow, an apprentice decorator, said he remembered feeling warm after freezing outside for so long. "I remember being cold and shivering and then the warmth of the emergency blanket and that's it. I think I just fell asleep."

Morrow moved to Auckland from Gisborne about five months ago. After breaking up with the girlfriend he moved up with, he began boarding with Dana's mother, Cheryl McCarthy.

That night, he remembered having a few drinks - and then it goes blank. He has no idea how he arrived at Starling Park.

"I can't even remember leaving the house."

Morrow said McCarthy's mother "heard the door open and close at 12.30am". The pair were not found until seven hours later.

"I am in shock ... I just woke up in hospital. I was like 'what the heck happened'. I just hope they catch whoever did this to us," said Morrow.

McCarthy, who was discharged from Middlemore Hospital yesterday, needed facial surgery after the attack.

Morrow suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. He said the left side of his body was not functioning and he now suffered headaches.

McNelly met Morrow's parents last week and visited the teenager in hospital on Friday.

"The one positive thing that he can recall is when I put the sweat top on him," said McNelly. "He can recall feeling cold but then he remembered a warm sensation."

McNelly said he washed the sweatshirt he had put across Morrow and gave it to him "as a souvenir".

The Herald on Sunday tracked the path followed by McCarthy in her search for help. She was so disoriented she wandered in the opposite direction from her home, only a few hundred metres away.

"She kept trying to hide her face from me with her hands," said Subritzky. "Her face was covered in blood ... in fact her whole body was covered in blood from head to toe.

"Her hair was all matted with blood and one eye was swollen and closed. One of her ears was battered. Her mother said her earrings were ripped out."

Subritzky's 5-year-old grandson had answered McCarthy's knock at the door and "was so shocked he was speechless".

"All he could do was stare at her so I had to get up and see who or what he was looking at."

Subritzky said McCarthy asked that her mother be called. Instead, she called the police. By then, Morrow had been found: "They asked me to ask if her name was Dana. She wasn't very talkative. She was sitting in our backyard which we had to clean after the police left.

"There was blood on the seat, blood on the table - it was a total bloodbath."

"I asked her if she wanted to come out the front of the porch in the sun because she was shivering. I had to help her out, she couldn't walk very well."