Helen McMurtrie reveals the pain of being shot while a NSW country police officer

It was a regular Friday night for NSW police officer Helen McMurtrie when her life was to change in an instant after being called to protect a woman violently attacked by her husband.

Her life in imminent danger, it was the second that seemed to last an eternity for former NSW police officer Helen McMurtrie.

Leading Senior Constable McMurtrie was standing in the driveway with two fellow officers, a sergeant and probationary constable, in the regional town of Glen Innes, eye-to-eye with a suspect in a domestic violence case, who was standing on a verandah with a rifle in his hands.

“(We’ve) all drawn our guns and we’re just screaming to ‘put it down, put it down’,” Ms McMurtrie recalls of the unfolding incident on the New England Highway.

“It was almost like it was in slow motion, because I’m thinking ‘what’s taking so long, why have you not shot me yet?’.

“I actually thought he was going to shoot them (his wife and her sister who were across the road). Initially I didn’t fear for myself, I was going ‘Oh my gosh, he’s going to kill her.”

Earlier on that Friday night in January 2019 Eric Newman’s wife had called the police after he had tried to strangle her.

Gary Jubelin with retired policewomen Alana Singleton (left) and Helen McMurtrie (right). McMurtrie’s career ended after she was shot in a stand-off in Glen Innes. Picture: Tim Hunter.

In harrowing detail Ms McMurtrie then describes what happens next in Gary Jubelin’s upcoming episode of his smash hit podcast I Catch Killers, which is out Monday.

As it turns out it wasn’t his wife but Ms McMurtrie and her fellow officers who ended up as the target of the man,

Slumped to the ground after being shot in the neck, the mother of two opens up to Jubelin on the moment the bullet hit and the trauma that followed.

It sharply puts into focus the dangers faced by police officers and the decisions they need to make, particularly those in regional towns, where there is not the option for back-up.

“For so long, you know what I’m thinking, does he want me to shoot him? What is he doing?,” Ms McMurtrie tells Jubelin.

Ms McMurtrie still has to deal with the trauma of the shooting.

“I’m going, am I justified (to shoot him)? Am I going to be criticised? And I honestly am thinking I’d rather get shot than shoot someone unjustified and all I’m thinking about is my powers.”

Ms McMurtrie said she and her colleagues backed out, still with guns drawn, when he fired.

“I’m thinking we’re going to have to take a shot … I just thought he’s going to kill her,” Ms McMurtrie recalls.

“I’ve turned my body to yell at (his wife and her sister who were across the other side of the road). And I’m yelling get in your car and go. And that’s when he shot. I didn’t hear the shot because I was yelling at the wife to go, my main concern is that she was going to die.

“I also think, thank God, that I was turned because I got hit on the left side and if I wasn’t turned I probably would have copped it right in the middle. And I don’t think I would have survived from that. So then the bang went off, I just hear (the probationary constable) screaming.”

McMurtrie was a Leading Senior Constable in Glen Innes when she was called out on a Friday night to a domestic dispute and was shot by Eric Newman.

As for what it felt like, Ms McMurtrie said: “All I can liken it to is the thick rubberiness of a squash ball … with the bullets they’ve got the point on the end so you almost think it would be a fine point and it didn’t feel like that. It was like a large sort of thud and that’s also to me what it sounded like.”

In the moments that followed Mrs McMurtrie was dragged away by her two colleagues including Sergeant Mark Johnston who had also been hit in the face by the bullet fired by Newman.

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“I kept saying ‘I love my kids, I love my kids’ because I thought that they were going to have to grow up without a mother,” she said.

“There’s that part of you (when) that survival instinct comes out, obviously. But then there’s also, that emotional side of I might die right now, I need to just stop the world so I can get some words relayed to my family and at that point you don’t think of anything else but that.”

In the chaos that followed, after firing at the police the gunman then turned the weapon on himself.

Having been transported to Gold Coast Hospital in the aftermath, to this day the former police officer still has shrapnel in her neck as it would be too dangerous to remove. Restricted movement, stabbing pain and difficulty swallowing are just some of the injuries that remain.

The incident also marked the end of Ms McMurtrie’s time in the Police Force.

“I thought at that stage I could not even look at a gun and it didn’t have to be a rifle. I couldn’t look at the police uniform. I couldn’t look at a gun in a magazine. I didn’t want to hear the police radio. And even today, if there’s a job that gets a bit heightened, I’m a mess, you know?,” Ms McMurtrie said.

Since then she has been promoting and helping with Alana Singleton who formed the charity organisation Emerge and See to help thousands of ex-police dealing with PTSD.

For even more detail on the charity’s work and Ms McMurtrie’s recovery from the horrific incident don’t miss I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin, the latest episode out on Monday.