Her 10-year-old son was not, according to his mother, punched in the stomach, chest or upper body as reported by mainstream media.
He was punched in the head.
That distinction would be horrifying enough under any circumstances. For her son, it carries an additional fear no child or parent should have to face. Her son has a rare, inoperable brain tumour.
The family had travelled to Melbourne for the regular three-monthly MRI he requires to monitor it when, according to his mother, they were attacked without warning on Spencer Street near the intersection of La Trobe Street at approximately 1pm on Tuesday.
Victoria Police has officially said the 10-year-old was punched to the “upper body”. Some subsequent reporting has described the blow as being to his chest or stomach. Police have not publicly identified the exact point of impact beyond the upper-body description.
Cherie was there. She witnessed it, and in a written account provided directly to Chris, she says the blow was to the side of her son's head.
“We were walking to our apartment when the guy just lunged over the top of me and coward punched my son straight to the side of his head sending straight to the floor. It was unprovoked and came out of nowhere.”
She says her immediate reaction was to protect her child and send her older son to find police.
“I then yelled at my 16 year old boy to go get the police while I scooped my ten year old up and made sure he was ok.”
What happened next turned an already horrifying alleged assault on a child into a fight for this mother's life. She says the man initially moved away before turning and coming back toward the family.
Realising what was happening, she put herself between him and her children.
“I turned to see where the guy was when I realised he was turning around and starting to come back towards us. I yelled at my boys to get out of there and run and I stood in front of them so he couldn’t get them and targeted me instead.”
Police allege the man then attacked her, putting her in a headlock before repeatedly stabbing her with a pair of scissors. Superintendent Zorka Dunstan subsequently described the incident as “completely random”.
Cherie's description of those moments is confronting.
“That’s when he punched me to the face sending (me) flat on my ass and then he grabbed me in a headlock and started to repeatedly stab me. I realised one of my boys hadn’t run away as he was screaming mum mum in horror. So I held on to this guy with my life so that he couldn’t turn on my child.”
Think about that for a moment.
She had already watched her 10-year-old son get knocked to the ground. She was being held and repeatedly stabbed. She could hear one of her children screaming for his mother.
Even while she was being attacked, her concern was stopping the alleged attacker from reaching her children. She says she was stabbed four times, including three wounds around her neck and back and another to the side of her arm. She also suffered a fractured leg during the attack.
Police initially reported that both the mother and son had sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Her son was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital while his mother was treated separately.
BUT "NON-LIFE-THREATENING" UNDERSTANDABLY DOES NOT TELL THE WHOLE STORY FOR THIS FAMILY
Her son was already in Melbourne because of his brain tumour.
“A blow like this to my boys head under any situation could have been lethal, the fact he has a tumor made this ordeal so much worse.”
Today, while his mother remains in another hospital because of the injuries she suffered protecting him, her son is undergoing the MRI the family had travelled to Melbourne for in the first place.
“(My son) is currently at the RCH as we speak having his routine MRI to see if the tumour has grown or spread and I can’t be there with him because I’m stuck at another hospital due to my injuries.”
Doctors will now be able to assess her son following the blow to his head while continuing the monitoring of the condition that brought the family to Melbourne.
It is an extraordinary additional layer to an already appalling incident.
THREE STRANGERS DECIDED NOT TO WALK PAST
There is another part of this story that deserves just as much attention.
People helped. Not from behind a phone. Not after the danger had passed. They physically stepped into an active attack involving a weapon and helped stop it.
Police Superintendent Zorka Dunstan said one passer-by jumped onto the alleged attacker and pulled him away from Cherie, before two other people joined in and helped restrain him.
Her assessment was simple.
“It’s heroic.”
Police have said that without the intervention of those members of the public, the situation could have been significantly worse.
We spend plenty of time talking about the worst of society. We should be prepared to acknowledge its best as well.
These men did not know the mother, or her boys. They could not have known whether there was another weapon, what the alleged attacker was capable of, or what would happen when they stepped in. They simply saw a woman being attacked in front of her children and decided they were not going to stand there and watch it happen.
The mother wanted her own words about those men published in full. So that is exactly what we are going to do.
“I want to thank the extremely brave men who put their own lives on the line to help save mine, that’s not a small thing and beers are definitely on me when I am mobile. You saved not only myself, my boys and other members of the public while selflessly risking your own safety. There will never be enough words or gratitude to express how grateful I am to you MEN.”
Those men deserve to be recognised and perhaps, amongst all the ugliness of what allegedly happened on a Melbourne street on Tuesday afternoon, that should be one of the things Australians remember. When a mother was protecting her children, complete strangers stepped forward to protect her.
