He disarmed a gunman at Monash Uni after being shot twice. Now, he doesn’t worry about little things

Lecturer Lee Gordon-Brown was writing on a whiteboard, the most mundane of tasks, when a crazed student stood up and shot him.

Out of the blue, one of his star econometrics students, Huan Yun Xiang, opened fire in a Monash University classroom, turning a routine exam revision class with 12 students into a bloodbath.

Lee Gordon-Brown in front of the Monash shooting commemorative mural.Credit: Eddie Jim

When it stopped, Xiang had killed classmates Steven Chan and William Wu, and wounded five other students in the sixth-floor classroom in the Menzies Building.

It was October 21, 2002. Gordon-Brown and two other men restrained Xiang until police arrived. Gordon-Brown was shot in an arm and a leg.

The day after the shooting, The Age reported on the front page that a student and part-time tutor, Alastair Boast, helped hold down Xiang, and academic Brett Inder took over from Gordon-Brown until police arrived.

The Age reported a policeman said the men’s bravery had prevented “a major disaster”.

The Age’s front page the day after the shooting.Credit: The Age

Paul Howells, the first paramedic at the scene, said: “The people on the floor at the time were just unbelievable. They definitely saved lives. One of the men in the class managed to disarm the gunman, secure the weapons and treat two of the patients.

“Credit should also be given to the attending ambulance officers, who did a superb job. The death toll could have been much worse.”

The shooting happened in about 20 seconds, remembers Gordon-Brown.

Returning to the university’s Clayton campus where it happened recently, he recalled first hearing a sound like a nail gun going off, then finding himself lying on the floor.

He saw a bullet hit the carpet near his face. Despite his serious wounds, Gordon-Brown says his previous training as an Army Reserve volunteer – that “if you do nothing, you’ll probably come second” – spurred him to act.

Having fired a similar pistol in the Reserve, he saw Xiang had paused to reload.

Gordon-Brown says he got up and lunged at Xiang, possibly catching him by surprise.

Gordon-Brown grabbed both Xiang’s wrists, so he dropped the gun. “He wriggled a bit, but I think he was in more shock than I was when he saw me get up off the floor.”

From left: William Wu and Steven Chan were killed in the shooting.

After a month in hospital, Gordon-Brown returned to lecturing at Monash and taught in the same department for the next 15 years.

Gordon-Brown is now retired and lives in Melbourne’s east. His last job was as an aerospace engineer at the East Sale and Laverton RAAF bases.

His arm, which has a bullet entry and an exit scar, works well, but the leg, with a bullet lodged in the groin, doesn’t move as well as it used to.

He used to have nightmares but says he is mentally resilient, having gone to boarding school and the Army Reserve.

However, he reckons he is “nowhere near as ambitious, nor as grumpy as I was before the shooting”.

“When you might die any day, a lot of little things become not worth worrying about.”

Xiang was found not guilty due to mental impairment. He remains a patient of Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital in Fairfield.

His case is regularly reviewed, but Gordon-Brown thinks it’s unlikely he will be released soon, having stabbed a psychiatrist with a knife in hospital in 2015.

Gordon-Brown isn’t angry at Xiang. “He had problems in his head. I can’t really blame him.”

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