1 Sunday ` proudly brought to you by Mazda. Tonight on Sunday ` who's there to help? (PHONE RINGS) A family in crisis. I heard him say, 'Oh, yeah, I just want to kill youse.' A mental health service under pressure. At the end of the day, we were asking for help and we never got it. And the cops on the front line picking up the slack. I've been whacked and kicked and spat at and it was often scary. They should not be the emergency response mental health service. They're not trained to do that. I like going there. I like seeing these people. A Kiwi businessman with a love for West Africa using fair trade to change lives. We said, 'Look we're trying to find some cola. Could you find us some?' He who brings cola brings peace. Connections that've changed him too. Whether I like it or not I'm there for the long haul. They're a part of your soul? You could say that. I'm lucky to be here. Ah. Someone just got stabbed outside London Bridge. Go! Run! She survived London's latest night of terror. Just said, 'There's a guy outside with a knife.' From a normal night at work to this. As he turned around he spotted me there. That's when the worst thing I could have imagined actually happened. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 Kia ora, I'm Miriama Kamo. Leanne Smith adores her son, even though he nearly killed her. But she's angry with a mental health system she says ignored her pleas for help. Leanne's son Kacee has schizophrenia. He stabbed her only minutes after health workers refused to take him into care. Tonight police officers are speaking out in Leanne's support. They complain an ailing health service has left them swamped with emergency callouts they aren't qualified to handle. This from Ian Sinclair. (DIAL TONE) Omapere on the Hokianga and a mother is forced to call the police on a much-loved son in the grip of mental illness. For Leanne Smith, the police are a last resort to protect her family from her son. Do you still love him? Yeah. I love him to bits. Even though he could have killed you? Yep. Yeah, I know. The problem we have at the moment is the police are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and there clearly needs to be barriers at the top of the cliff to stop all these mental health patients ending up in crisis situations that the police are attending. Leanne Smith's plea for help would be one of 90 call-outs police receive each day nationwide for mental health-related matters ` callouts which police believe have them playing psychiatrist, mental health nurse and social worker. At the outset, no one could have guessed the trouble that lay in store for Kacee Smith. He was good at rugby, really good at rugby. He was very good at school. One teacher actually did a test. He got 87% and we were like, 'Wow, what?' And did you have high hopes for him, Leanne? I did, yeah. We both did, yeah. Mm. And why not? Omapere in the remote Far North is about as close to paradise as it gets. But somewhere on Kacee's journey to adulthood, something changed in him for good. Something just wasn't right, you know? Yeah, it just wasn't right about him. Then began a troubled life that led in and out of prison. In 2008 doctors finally diagnosed Kacee's problem ` schizophrenia. It was really, really sad. I just cried for weeks. Between 2010 and 2015 Kacee was committed into mental care 32 times, often with police help. Just, yeah, devastating, and just` I dunno. But for Leanne there was worse to come. It was in Labour Weekend. We just got back and he was here with his gears. Kacee was living in a boarding house in Rawene 23km from Omapere. But there'd been a problem ` he'd lost his accommodation. On the Saturday night, yeah, he woke up and I could hear him pacing up and down through the middle of the night and getting quite aggressive. Were you scared? Yeah, I was. I had grandchildren, my daughters, you know, just in a small place. Leanne had already alerted mental health workers Kacee was too aggressive to stay with her. You know, he's my son. I can't just kick him out on the streets. By Sunday my daughter Roxanne goes, 'Oh, Mum, he's talking about getting a gun.' And I heard him say, 'Oh yeah, I just want to kill youse and kill myself.' That's when she rang the mental health crisis assessment team. The response stunned her. He goes, 'Oh, they're coming back. They're coming over at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning,' and I go, 'What?' You've got a son who says he'll kill you, the family and the children in the house and himself,... Mm. ...and they're coming over at 10 o'clock the next morning? Mm-hm. What do you make of that? Mm. Yeah. Not` Yeah. They should have come. The whole response to mental health in New Zealand has reached a really critical point. Mental Health Foundation chief Shaun Robinson says the mental health system just isn't coping. And therefore the police are having to respond to more and more callouts relating to mental health incidents. They should not be the emergency response mental health service for New Zealand. They are playing far too large a role. They're not trained to do that. By 6am Monday morning Leanne Smith had no choice. Her son was out of control. It was terrifying. His eyes were all glazed and that really scared me. And he just came for me and started pushing. And so I ran inside and shut the door on him and went into my bedroom. Rang the police straight away. You made it pretty plain, did you, that you felt unsafe ` the children felt unsafe? Yeah. Yep. Nevertheless, police decided to wait until the experts ` the mental health crisis team ` had made their assessment of Kacee at 10am. We were back to survival mode of keeping everything calm. At 10am the mental health crisis team finally arrived. Remember, this was a day after Leanne says she first alerted them of her son's threat to kill himself and the family. But the team refused to take Kacee. I just felt like she was not listening to me. She didn't want to take him and she'd already made her mind up. You know, she's, 'I can't do anything. He's not sick enough. There's not enough beds.' The mental health crisis team left, leaving Leanne and her family alone with their fears. I felt like I was nothing. I didn't matter. (SOBS) That my family didn't matter. I was devastated. I just never felt like that before. It was horrible. Well, I think that comes down to services being over-stretched and underfunded and understaffed. That's when you're going to see cracks in the system. What is the worst case scenario? Well, in the absolute worst case scenarios, you know, we're talking about people dying. (PHONE RINGS) After the break ` When mental health gets it wrong, cops caught in the crossfire. Experts are saying that there was no risk there, so how would a police officer be able to judge that better? 1 It was always scary, especially with mental health. They're unpredictable and often violent. Nobody knows the frustration of our mental health system better than ex-cop Gavin Benney. You know, I've been whacked and kicked and spat at and all sorts of things. For 30 years, Gavin was on callout in Northland. On your own, sometimes middle of the night, 40, 50, 60, 70 Ks away from any help. Nationwide police get called out 90 times a day on mental health- related issues. And things could change pretty quickly, and it was` yeah, it was often scary. You know, when they start threatening families and that sort of thing and the issues that go with that then it's` You would hope that we would have a system that would deal with that, but there were times when it wasn't. As Northland grandmother Leanne Smith discovered. At the end of the day, we were asking for help and we never got it. She and her family were left helpless when a mental health crisis team refused to take her unstable schizophrenic son Kacee into care. I heard Kacee come out and he walked up the hallway, and then he walked back down, and then he came back up. With two daughters and four young grandchildren in the house, everyone was on edge. How worried were you about your brother at that point? I was, yeah, very worried about him. Leanne's daughter Roxanne says Kacee had often warned he wanted to kill their mother. Just 20 minutes after the mental health team left, Kacee struck. He grabbed the knife out of the drawer and swung around, cos she was sitting in the chair over there, and just came up and stabbed her. It was a sharp pain, but also like I'd been punched as well in my back. And it was just excruciating and I just fell to the ground and screamed. How hard did he stab her? Really hard. I heard it. The knife went all the way in, so I` Yeah, it actually bent as he put` you know, as he stabbed me. The knife itself was about that long. Fortunately the knife hit her shoulder blade, deflecting it from vital organs. She fell on the ground and I grabbed her and pulled her away from him. She was trying to keep him away from me and telling him to stop. And he's like, 'Nah, just let her go. Let her go,' and he wanted to do more. Your mum says you saved her life. She says you were incredibly brave. What do you have to say to that? She's my mum. I love her. Out the back, Leanne's other daughter, Lakota, heard her mother's screams. I ran outside ` out the front ` and I rang the police. They were telling me to keep calm and that someone was on the way. Police arrived within 3 and a half minutes. Were you conscious? I was conscious but I was in pain. I think I can remember just apologising for being, you know` Yeah. For what? I was still at that stage where I was` I felt like I was a burden cos, you know, nobody wanted to come and help us so I thought we were a burden, and I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry'. Leanne was medivacked to hospital. I think there was a nurse on board with me just taking all my vital signs and keeping an eye on me ` whether, you know, I would slip into, you know, unconsciousness. But I felt OK apart from the pain, and feeling a bit giddy, you know, just through the shock of it. My body was going through a bit of shock, and` Yeah. So why, after repeated pleas for help, did Leanne end up still getting stabbed? Well, for their part, the police voluntarily called in the Independent Police Complaints Authority to investigate what went wrong. The Authority decided police did actually underestimate Leanne's concerns. For that the police have apologised. What do you make of the police apology? I think it's awesome, you know. It means something because they've done their report, they know that they've done something wrong, and the sorry meant something, you know what I mean? In her opinion, mental health should have stepped in way before police were needed. The view from the front line ` she's dead right. The police that attended that incident are obviously upset that` what the result was. But experts are saying that there was no risk there, so how would a police officer be able to judge that better? Chris Cahill, Police Association president. The police can turn up to intervene in a crisis, but that's not going to stop those mental health conditions happening in the first place. And as I say, the situation with this is really clear. The mental health crisis team went there and felt that person was OK. The police weren't in a position to second guess that. So she'd clearly been calling for help for a while and it didn't seem like the mental health team were able to give that help, and that's really where the failure is. Coupled with that failure, say officers, is a skyrocketing rate of callouts. The figures are showing pretty much year on year a 5% increase in mental health incidents that the police attend and an 8% increase in suicides and attempted suicides, and those figures have continued to increase for the last 10 years. Leanne Smith says her family's had verbal apologies from some mental health staff involved, but she says that's not been enough. Over the past week we've made repeated requests to Health Minister Jonathan Coleman, inviting him to discuss these issues on Sunday, but his office failed to respond by deadline. Instead he issued a brief statement saying he acknowledged mental health problems were on the increase and that he's planning to present a mental health proposal ` a new one ` to cabinet shortly. The government has also pledged an extra $230 million for mental health over four years ` not enough, says the Mental Health Foundation. I would say double it and we might be getting close. Just pouring money into each DHB and kind of filling up each of the DHB glasses a little bit more is not going to be the best way to solve these problems. It's gotta be more cost effective to try and stop people suffering from serious mental health issues, rather than treat them once they're already suffering from it. On that point the ministry agreed, but it will come too late for Kacee. He is now detained in psychiatric care after being found not guilty of wounding with intent on the grounds of insanity. How close do you think you came to all of you losing your lives? In my view, I came really close. To me, his admission to kill` you know, to get a gun and kill us, yeah, or kill me, kill us and himself, was a plea for help, you know. I felt that. Leanne feels if speaking out against the system can save just one life, it's worth it. I question mental health, you know, to the point that I think that there should be changes and those changes should happen, you know? The Northland DHB which was responsible for Kacee's care has accepted there were deficits in its handling of the incident which led to Leanne's stabbing, and it's formally apologised to her. It's accepted the findings of two reviews and boosted its mental health and addiction services by $1.4 million. Up later, the Australian woman stabbed in the throat during the recent London terror attacks. But next, the Kiwi businessman using cola nuts to change lives in West Africa. So there's two ways of harvesting cola ` either you use a very long stick or you climb up a tree and use a very long stick. We sent them a box of 15 bottles and they were` you know, they were amused. Then six months after that we sent them a cheque and that's when they started taking things slightly more seriously. 1 Welcome back. When Kiwi businessman Simon Coley decided to source the key ingredient for his cola drink from Sierra Leone, it didn't just change the local producers' lives ` it changed his. The West African country is probably best known for blood diamonds and the use of child soldiers during its brutal civil war, but for Simon, it's a place whose people have captured his heart. A warning ` this story does contain some confronting material. John Hudson reports. There's no electricity there. They get up in the morning when the sun comes up and they go to bed when it gets dark. Their floors are dirt. It's pretty primitive, but they look after each other. You know, they have a really strong community spirit. I like going there. (CHUCKLES) I like seeing these people. Simon Coley is back in Sierra Leone. Where's your hair gone? You're like me now. Back in Boma village to visit the people of Tiwai. Every time we go, there's dancing. (DRUM BEATS) And this time there was a young woman dancing with an orchestra of chanting and drums, kicking up dust and doing these kind of whirling dances. It was fantastic. Thank you for making us feel so welcome here. Simon is one of the founders of Kiwi drinks company Karma Cola. Five years ago I never thought I'd be standing in this place talking to all of you about what we've managed to do together. (APPLAUSE) In 2011, they struck a deal with the people of Tiwai... This is where the jungle properly starts. ...to buy a bag of cola nuts harvested in the nearby rainforest. It's a tricky business. So there's two ways of harvesting cola ` either you use a very long stick, or you climb up a tree and you use a very long stick. The nuts grow in pods high up in the canopy. Give it a shove. That's it. They're encased in a protective white pith. It's quite sweet. It's quite sweet. And then it then it gets bitter as you chew it more. In Sierra Leone, cola is symbolic. They use it to socialise, to greet each other, in naming ceremonies, and it's a folk medicine. We say he who brings cola brings peace. He who brings cola brings peace. Brings peace, yes. It's the peace nut. MEN: Yes. Fantastic. And these people certainly know the value of peace. For 11 years, Sierra Leone was wracked by civil war. About 50,000 people lost their lives, some at the hands of child soldiers forced to fight for the rebel army. They started to grab our children. They took them away. They rape our wives in front of us. They kill our brothers and sisters in front of us. It's not easy to talk about or to hear. The rebels were told to do things like choose one or two people in the village and they would be harmed. They'd have their arms chopped off. It was so horrible that we had to fled into the forest. They took what they could, but when they returned, their villages had been burned and their farms ruined. It was a complete set-back. There was no money so it take a time for us to get back to normal life. Today the cola is helping them recover. Like two bags of cola nuts ` that can bring in some good cash that I can take care of my family so our lives rebuild again. We survive. Well, we needed the original ingredient. We couldn't really call it Karma Cola unless we used the real thing and it was benefitting someone that was growing it. It was Fair Trade entrepreneur Albert Tucker who introduced Simon to the people of Tiwai. We said, 'Look, we're trying to find some cola. We know it comes from West Africa. 'You're in Sierra Leone. Could you find us some?' And he said, 'No problem.' Albert could see the opportunity, but at first the locals wondered if selling their peace nut overseas would be a good thing. They were a bit perplexed by the request, but they managed to gather up 5kg of cola nut and they mailed it to us, so we got it in a little courier pack. (LAUGHS) Through customs in a little courier pack? Through customs, yep. The next lot of cola nuts didn't make it. Unfortunately MAF weren't that keen on us bringing it in in our backpacks so it was incinerated. (LAUGHS) They had to come up with a more effective way of getting cola through border security. So Plan B was what? Plan B was vodka. (LAUGHS) Why not? The vodka sterilises it and makes sure that nothing other than cola arrives in the country. The vodka is evaporated off before the nuts are thoroughly washed to ensure an alcohol-free product. For the people of Tiwai, selling nuts to Kiwis has been life-changing. We sent them a box of 15 bottles and they were` you know, they were amused. They tasted it. They'd never tasted anything like that before. Then six months after that we sent them a cheque, and the cheque was for about US$10,000. And that's when they started taking things slightly more seriously. (CHUCKLES) Before Karma Cola come, no motor vehicles could enter Boma because there was no bridge. When Simon arrived at Boma village, there was a surprise waiting for him. They were standing on a bridge that had been built with the proceeds of that first amount of sale. We had a few simple rules we put around the use of the money. One was that it be spent on things that be of benefit to the entire community, not to individuals, that it would help them develop resources that were sustainable. But you're not a charity. No. How do you balance the charitable side of the business with the bottom line, the profit? It's important for us to be profitable because we want the business to run of its own merit. We're not just a drink. The cause that's behind us creating and selling the product is as important as the product itself. It doesn't change the fact, though, that you're producing a sugary drink. There are two ways of addressing it. One is that don't drink too much of it. If you're really thirsty, drink water. We've also just developed a no-sugar version. There are about 2 billion cola-branded soft drinks consumed in the world a day. We thought we could sell a small amount of that 2 billion to do some good for the people who were producing the main ingredients. Education is very good. CLASS: Education is very good. After the break ` Girls tend to get the raw deal. Changing the life of a former child soldier. Umu has this incredible resilience. If there is anything we can do to help her get ahead we should. (DIAL TONE) Hey, Albert. VOICE: The person whom you're trying to reach... Oh, come on. So naively, I thought that it would be really easy to run a business like this on the Internet, but not in the middle of West Africa. (DIAL TONE) Here we go! There you go again. I'm sure the bandwidth in Sierra Leone will improve over time. Perhaps that's a project we could work on. (LAUGHS) How are things back in Boma? Things are all right in Boma. Simon's company has several long-term projects on the go, benefiting eight villages in the Tiwai community. I wanted to talk a little bit about the Tiwai Island. Tiwai Island is a wildlife sanctuary on the Moa River, a prime destination for eco-tourists. Hindowa's considering some tourism efforts that might help bring people to the area. When we were last there that jetty was a bit wobbly. Yes. I don't remember there being a jetty. I just remember jumping in a boat from the mud. The rainforest's such a rich environment to travel through. I think it would be quite exciting to take people there. They can all benefit from accommodating and guiding tourists around the area. (MONKEY CALLS) Which is home to the rare Diana monkey. Black and white ` up there. But at the moment, the guides need to be guards as well. It's because the poachers come to the island and kill some monkeys. It's hoped they can eventually convince those poachers to swap hunting for gamekeeping and a share in a sustainable future. Bye bye! But there have been far worse troubles on the road to recovery. An Ebola outbreak three years ago killed 4000 people in Sierra Leone. Travel was limited, Boma isolated, cut off from its main food market. A couple of women volunteered to lease motorbikes and drive into the market, and they petitioned us and we said, 'Why not?' Micro loans from Simon's company enabled new trade to flourish. They started being grocers on motorbikes, basically, and they set up little stalls outside their houses, and now there's probably 10 of them doing that. It's helped the local community and given them work. And the help doesn't end there. This is Mr Simon. In Tiwai there's a hunger for learning... Education is very good. CLASS: Education is very good. ...but it's not always available to everyone. Traditionally the kids that get educated are the oldest sons. Girls tend to get the raw deal. So they set up a scholarship programme for female students. CLASS: A, B, C, D... We have close to 80 girls with scholarships in primary school and secondary school and we think the first girl from the village will be admitted to university in the next month or two. Education give women independence. At an Auckland photographic exhibition featuring the people of Tiwai, money is being raised for another young woman's tertiary education. Umu is 24, a former child soldier abducted at 5 and sexually abused from the age of 6. TRANSLATOR: When she was raped, one of them said, 'Now you are going to be my wife.' She told them, 'I'm not the age to be a housewife. My intention is to go to school.' She's a kid that suffered from the hardship of a 10-year war, lost her family and now wants to try and even the score by becoming a lawyer. They raised $7000, enough to pay a year's tuition fees for Umu. She's symbolic of the kind of thing that we could do as this endeavour progresses. How do you feel about these people now that you've experienced so much with them? It's not often someone from my background gets to have the experience of living amongst, you know, people that've been through the kind of hardship that Umu and Hindowa have, so, you know, whether I like it or not I'm there for the long haul. They're a part of your soul? You could say that. And they carry everything on their heads in West Africa, so if you go to market this woman's got her handbag on her head. Wherever he goes,... Hello. How many languages do they speak? ...Simon is keen to share his experience of Sierra Leone. Yes. Do they have whiteboards like we do? No, they don't. They have old blackboards with chalk. And here at Green Bay Primary, the cola cultural contact is catching. I was thinking, 'Wouldn't it be cool if our class connected with a class over there 'and we learned from each other?' It's very dry today, isn't it? A bush walk in Piha is a long way from a trek through the Boma jungle. Shall we look for some birds, you guys? (TUI CALLS) Once you hear one they all start up. Simon's partner Jodi and daughters Sofia and Lulu haven't been to Sierra Leone, but their dad did set them up with pen pals. And they were writing what they wanted to be, and most of them wanted to be nurses cos they wanted to help people or just those kind of jobs because they'd been through so much. Would you wanna go there? Yeah, I would love to go there, actually. I wanna go. But not as a tourist. I'd like to get to know the people and see what they` how they live. I don't want to be one of those stuck-up people who go over there and try and make them live how we do. We had some bitter cola before. Very good. What's your end goal for them? Self-sufficiency? I think ultimately for them to know that they have an economy that doesn't require us to be the enabler would be great. So if we can walk away with a few products they can sell that are going to guarantee the village has got income, then I think that's the measure of self-sufficiency. Simon may be in the business of doing some good, but for him it's the people of Sierra Leone ` the survivors ` who set an example to all of us. I see in them a really positive outlook for the future, and we can all learn a lot from that. The beautiful footage of Sierra Leone in that story was shot and directed by former Sunday producer Phill Prendeville. If you would like to help Umu achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer, just go to our Facebook page for details. After the break, a story of survival from London's terror attack. Two guys waving around knives. Candice comes running downstairs clutching her neck with a cloth. I was thinking for a moment that maybe I wasn't going to make it. All his message said was, 'Candy's fine, but she's been stabbed in the neck.' It's not OK to control your partner with threats. It's not OK to control who they spend time with,... ...how they use their phone or Facebook or how they dress. It's not OK to make them live in fear. It's not OK to say it's none of our business. Because it is our business. And it's not OK. Ever. But it is OK to ask for help. Welcome back. It's only been two weeks since the most recent terror attack on London in which three men armed with knives drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians on the London Bridge. Then came a rampage of indiscriminate stabbings. Eight dead and among the dozens of wounded, a Christchurch man, Oliver Dowling, who underwent four hours of surgery but is now recovering. And from Queensland, Australia, Candice Hedge, who was working nearby when the attack happened. Tonight she tells Melissa Doyle how she survived. I'm lucky to be here. Like, it's not really a lucky situation, but considering what happened, you know, it's pretty amazing, so I just` I'm thankful. Yeah. Candice Hedge's strength and resilience just days after a terrorist stabbed her in the throat and almost killed her is truly remarkable. Will you have a scar? I guess so. It'll probably just turn into, like, an old lady wrinkle. (CHUCKLES) But, yeah, I think it'll be decent for a while. (CHUCKLES) Has it sunk in yet? Talking about it helps. I think maybe when I leave hospital and I go home just to everyday life, things sort of might hit me in a different way, but... Yeah, it's just amazing that I survived. The emotion of the last week surfaces as he's reunited with her father Ross and her sister, Amber. Sorry. Sorry. I was going in for a nuzzle. No nuzzles. I held it together better than I thought I would. I just thought I'd fall apart in a mess, but yeah. It was really good to see her and good to see her smiling. (SMOOCH!) Yeah, this one, see? Candice's British boyfriend Luke has been by her side since the attack and was with her on the night the terrorists struck. She comes off really shy and reserved sometimes, but deep down, she's` she's got those guts. She's got those guts. Yeah, she's an incredible person. Mm. I love her to bits. Candice and Luke met a year and a half ago when Luke was living in Brisbane. We were working for the same people at, like, sister bars and, you know, struck up a nice friendship. So, yeah, we just went from there. When Luke's visa ran out, the pair moved to London. Candice got work as a manager at Elliot's Cafe in the popular tourist area known as Borough Market. And she actually employed me, so... (LAUGHS) Yeah, I'm very grateful for that. Candice and Luke were at work at Elliot's together. We were having a great night. It sort of picked up a little bit later in the evening. We were just really enjoying ourselves, you know? Like a usual Saturday night. (OMINOUS MUSIC) But this was no ordinary Saturday night. Ah, someone just got stabbed outside London Bridge. There's something going on right now. Go! Just before 10 o'clock, three men armed with knives drive a van into a crowd of pedestrians here on London Bridge. The van travels down Borough High Street and crashes into a pub. Get back! Go! Go! Run! People were rushing forward into the restaurant and I was trying to figure out what was happening. I talked to people and someone just said, 'There's a guy outside with a knife.' And then, you know, before we knew it they were, sort of, approaching. They were Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba ` Islamic extremists on a suicide mission. I decided to just go out and have a look and see what was going on. And, you know, no more than 15 metres, there they were. Two guys waving around knives. One of them had a fairly big machete in his hands. The terrorists were indiscriminately stabbing and slashing anyone they could find. I saw two of them come in, and then I` you know, I just sort of waited. They were behind me, so I couldn't see. There's a big mirror in the back of the restaurant, and I could see in the reflection them walking in and, like, panic just came over me. It came over everyone. It was chaotic. I did see one of our customers get stabbed by one of the guys, and the one that was standing beside me was, like, shouting. They were saying, 'This is for our family. This is for Allah. Stop`' I don't know. Stop something. Stop living this life. Just screaming. He basically was standing beside me. Like, he was there, standing, shouting at those guys, and I was sort of down here, like, trying not to be seen, basically. And he saw you? Yeah, just sort of turned around. I think he was leaving. But yeah, as he turned around he spotted me there and it was just one quick go and that's it. Just stabs you in the throat and walks off? Yeah. Yeah. He looked at me. I looked at him. I can't remember, really, what he looks like. There's just sort of, like, you know... He got me. And yeah, I just tried to get to safety, really, and remain calm. That's when the worst thing I could have imagined actually happened. Candice comes running downstairs clutching her neck with a cloth. There was a brief moment where we were like, 'This might be it.' Outside on the street, the terrorists' murderous rampage continued. And they attack him. They just go after him and try stabbing him. The police were closing in. At 10.16pm, a team of heavily armed police officers surrounded the three knife-wielding suspects. Their reign of terror ended in a hail of police gunfire. (SIREN WAILS) The final moments of the terrorist attack were captured on video. He gets shot ` bang, bang, bang. Nearby, Candice was fighting for her life. I took her into the kitchen. I sat her down and then she just` All this blood` There was just so much blood. Like, I could feel the amount of blood and it was warm on my hand, and I was vomiting blood ` like, quite a bit ` like, three or four times, I think. It just kept coming. I was putting pressure on her wounds, just telling her to breathe, to focus, to breathe. I was thinking for a moment that maybe I wasn't gonna make it. (SIREN WAILS) Ambulances weren't allowed into the area because of fears the attack was not over. Everyone, including Candice, had to leave on foot or be carried. We had to go down a few streets to get to safety where they had the ambulance waiting for us. Pretty full on. Back in Australia, news of the attack was breaking. So I just put the TV on and started trying to call Candy straight away and I couldn't get through to her, and then I just messaged Luke and he messaged back pretty quick and just said` Like, all his message said was, 'Candy's fine but she's been stabbed in the neck.' It was pretty devastating, especially when I couldn't contact her. It's probably the longest day I've had in my life. Pretty good. Ross and Amber caught the first flight they could to London. They came with presents and messages from family. There was something about seeing your big, brave, stoic dad... (CHUCKLES) Yeah. ...and he was pretty happy to see his little girl. Yeah. That was pretty emotional. He's a man of few words, but, like, that was really nice. Is she doing OK? Yeah, she seems to be doing fine. Yeah, today's the best I've heard her and I've seen her, and she's obviously happy that we're here too, I'd say. I hope so. (CHUCKLES) Candice is recovering well. The knife came within millimetres of her artery and vocal cords. It went in pretty deep, they said, and if it was on a different angle, well, you know, we might not even be sitting here, so I'm just grateful that she's OK. Candice is fully aware of how close she came to not making it. Among the eight people killed were two Australians ` Sara Zelenak, a nanny from Brisbane, and Kirsty Boden, a nurse from Adelaide. It's not fair that they didn't make it, and I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky for making it, but, you know, I just` I just want to try and be as positive as I can about a pretty bad situation. And that defiant attitude will go a long way to helping Candice get better and get on with her life with Luke. Will you and Candice return to work at the same place? Yes, most definitely. We've had attack after attack after attack, and all it does is make us stronger. The love and bravery of this city always overpowers the hate, and those cowards ` they'll just perish, you know. You strike one of us, you strengthen all of us. I'm not gonna let them change my life. I mean, they have, but, you know, I'm gonna turn it to my advantage if I can. We can't let our lives be ruled by fear, and we need to carry on together ` strong. And we're happy to report that Candice was discharged from hospital earlier this week and is recovering well. That's our show for tonight. Join us on Facebook and Twitter ` SundayTVNZ.