Glass everywhere: Police estimate up to $2000 damage was done to Nepean Liberal candidate Russell Joseph’s Holden sedan in the random attack. Pictures: Supplied

ASPIRING politician Russell Joseph was “inadvertently caught up” in the drama which unfolded in Rosebud, Friday 13 July, when an off-duty paramedic was stabbed, shop windows smashed, cars crashed and traders huddled in fear.

The Nepean Liberal candidate had left his Ninth Avenue office about 7pm and stepped into the dark street. “The street light was not working but I could see police standing around my car and heard the commotion and wondered what was going on,” he said. “Then I saw the car’s smashed windscreen, smashed side and rear windows … there was glass everywhere …”

He was told a man – at that time still on the run after allegedly assaulting the paramedic – had used a tomahawk to cause up to $2000 damage to his Holden sedan.

“It was certainly a shock. On an otherwise peaceful evening in Rosebud, some guy on a drug fuelled bender had trashed my car, stabbed a woman, threatened another with a tomahawk, trashed another car and assaulted an ambo,” he said.

“He is now thankfully in custody, and as far as I know the other victims are doing as well as can be expected.”

While saying he’d “had better days” he said the trauma was “nothing compared to that experienced by the paramedic”.

“I really feel for her,” he said.

First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 24 July 2018