Daryl

Cruse Scotland’s Lead Trainer Daryl shares how his life changed in an instant on an ordinary Saturday afternoon after witnessing a devastating street attack. 

He shares his experience and the support he received to cope with the psychological impact of witnessing such an attack.

Please be aware that Daryl’s story contains details that some people may find upsetting.

It is the middle of a very ordinary day. My house is next to a road, and my bay windows look onto the road. It was a Saturday afternoon; the television is on.

Then I hear a scream, and then the thumping of feet running past the window, so it was the kind of noise travelling through the pavement and through the house.

Within moments, I was up looking at the window at the front and witnessed the awfulness of a young guy in a hoodie, armed with a large kitchen knife, attack and stab a woman.

Things move quickly from there, in terms of the surrealness of the experience.

Unbeknownst to me, my neighbour next door had also been alerted by the scream.

I was looking down the street 10 metres to that point. I shouted out, we ran, and my wife Joyce came from the back of the house. Joyce said, “What's going on?” I said, “Grab a phone, a woman had been attacked.”

We went out the door to confront the attacker. My neighbour, microseconds ahead of me, had confronted the attacker, who ran off, and he chased him.

My wife and my neighbour went to assist the woman who was on the ground, and was catastrophically injured. I was on the phone with the ambulance. I was unaware that someone else had been involved.

20 metres round the corner appears a small primary school-age child. And I put two and two together. This was a mother and a child who had been attacked in the street. The child had run off. The mother may have protected her and saved her.

But I was aware of that going on, and this child came back to the scene. So, I was on the phone on one hand, and I was seeking to reassure and shield this child.

By this time, other neighbours had come out from the street. This had landed in the street and on the road, and buses have stopped, and cars have stopped. I was very much aware of that experience; it was as if there was a tunnel vision, and whatever I looked at was what I saw, but I was also aware of what other things were there.

The police arrived as I was on the phone. The ambulance took longer. And my neighbour had arrived back. We were all giving descriptions of the assailant, of the attacker.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, we knew this woman was dead. The little girl was in tears; she was hanging on to the police officer for dear life. It was awful for her, awful.

Police eventually caught the guy just at the edges of the neighbourhood.

Support

I was encouraging folk to talk to someone whom they trust. Who is your best mate? Who is there for you? Who can handle hearing this that has happened to you?

So, I was encouraging folk to do that. So bizarrely enough, I phoned my brother.

I caught him unawares, said to him, "Listen, I've just been through this experience, mate, and I need to speak about it. Are you up for that?" My brother is a Police Officer, so that was handy, and he just listened.

Just allowed me to share the story. At those times, my activation was high from the experience, too, but he gave me that space and listened.

I went and phoned my manager, Nicola, and after a couple of workdays, I did not think I was fit for work and said can I come and speak to you? She was excellent, not there as a manager but as a therapist.

I wanted to have a therapeutic conversation, a conversation with purpose. So, I had my friend and my brother. So, there were different elements of usefulness to these conversations.

I had not had a constructed therapeutic conversation, which would allow me to present my narrative and have it heard and interpreted in a therapeutic kind of way. So, that therapeutic communication, that feedback to what has just been heard.

It is the therapeutic conversation, the purpose of which is about someone looking in on your experiences and being curious about them and just checking out some of the vulnerabilities of conclusions I have made in my head.

And being curious about those conclusions and just helping open other conclusions if they are a bit fixed, or at very least, reinforcing that that is not the only healthy conclusion in the world to come to. There are other conclusions that it is purposeful.

So, I sought that out, and I met with one of Cruse Scotland’s volunteers.

Impact of experience

It has impacted me a lot. I fast-forward action scenes where someone picks up a knife on Netflix. I do not need to see that. Small things, my awareness, and threat assessment were raised.

I am thinking about the experience. I am no longer triggered into reliving and going through the experience. I am reminded of it. I am reminded of an awful experience that I had, and when I think about that awful experience, I do not really enjoy thinking about it. So, I will just move on quite quickly.

Finding someone, drawing on the trust of an already established relationship. And I suppose in some respects, testing that relationship with that.

Nonetheless, the trust and the relationship for somebody to hear what is going on for you and being able to keep it together enough for you to get to the end of the conversation and say, man, I feel for you, mate, what a situation you are in. How are you getting on? That is important.

Witnessing violence can be deeply traumatic, and talking about it with people who can truly listen—friends, family, and trained professionals—can make all the difference in processing what happened and moving forward.

If you need to talk, please reach out and call our freephone Helpline on 0808 802 6161.