Backpacker a miracle survivor
Published: August 10, 2007
A MATTER of a few millimetres and minutes are all that saved hero backpacker Paul De Waard’s life.
The two bullets fired into his chest and abdomen on Monday morning tore through his sternum, shattered his right lung, left two holes in his bowel and destroyed several major blood vessels.
More than 10 litres of blood — twice the amount carried by a male adult — spilled from Mr De Waard’s body in the hours after the shooting.
He will forever have a terrifying souvenir of his surfing safari in Australia — a bullet lodged in his pelvis.
But if the chest shot had been millimetres closer to his heart, or emergency crews had taken several minutes longer to get him to Royal Melbourne Hospital, trauma surgeon Russell Gruen said Mr De Waard would not have survived.
“Paul was quite literally bleeding to death,” he said.
“Paul was as close to death as you get without going there.”
Paul’s mother yesterday choked back tears as she remembered the family that was not as lucky as hers.
Speaking for the first time since rushing from the Netherlands to be by her wounded son’s side, Marjan Heijnen’s first thoughts were for the family of Brendan Keilar, shot dead as the two rushed to save Kara Douglas during a William St attack on Monday.
“I am so sad for you . . . he (Paul) is alive, but that man is dead, so it is very difficult — it is double,” a tearful Ms Heijnen said.
Having believed for most of her 48-hour journey that her son was close to death from two bullet wounds, Ms Heijnen said she was shocked to arrive as he woke from an induced coma on Thursday morning.
“The only thing I could do is talk to him and say ‘mamma is here, daddy is here, brothers are here, it will be OK’,” she said.
“I am very proud. I think he is very brave.”
While Mr De Waard’s surfing holiday came within millimetres of ending his life, Ms Heijnen said she was still thankful Australia had brought her “very quiet” son out of his shell over the past 11 months.
“He is 25 but he is for me also the baby. But I am so proud that he was here and that he has grown here in Australia in his head and in his attitude,” she said.
After spending time in Sydney, Cairns and a three-week trip to New Zealand, Mr De Waard had been in Melbourne just four days before Monday’s shooting.
His family were counting down the days to his homecoming on July 18.
Shocked father Hans De Waard and brothers Bart, 31, and Eric, 28, yesterday paid tribute to the young man now being hailed a hero around the world.
“What he did, it kind of sums him up,” Bart De Waard said.
“He wants to be there for everybody and I’m sure there wasn’t a doubt in his mind when he saw it happening that he wanted to help.
“He didn’t realise the risks, of course, he was taking, but he just jumped in and that’s what he always does.
“When we heard the complete story this morning we realised how lucky he was.
“He was so close to actually dying that we are just
so happy.”
Trauma surgeon Mr Gruen said Paul was in an operating theatre less than an hour after the shooting.
A team of cardiac surgeons fought to stop the bleeding in his chest and repair his shattered right lung, while a separate team of vascular surgeons worked on his abdominal wound, stopping the bleeding in his pelvis and patching two holes in his bowel.
After nearly three hours of surgery the bleeding had been stopped and Mr De Waard was sent to the intensive care unit to be further resuscitated and recover from the loss of blood in preparation for more surgery.
“He’s done well and we are hopeful he will continue to do well,” Mr Gruen said.
“He’s got a way to go yet to become an active young man again, but he’s certainly done well and it is a courageous recovery on his part. He has lost a portion of that lung but he is a fit, healthy young man and he should have a pretty normal respiratory reserve.”
It will be several days before Mr De Waard is able to leave the intensive care unit, but the medical team expects him to return home without any long-term complications.
ALLEGED CBD killer Christopher Wayne Hudson was behind bars at the Metropolitan Remand Centre last night after being discharged from a secure hospital wing.
Hudson, 29, had recovered well enough from surgery to a mystery arm wound to be moved to prison early yesterday.
Homicide investigators have until October 10 to have the brief of evidence against Mr Hudson ready for court.
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