Steve Willdern and Angela Jay honoured for bravery in the face of crazed stalker Paul Lambert
STEVE Willdern will never forget the sound of Angela Jay’s screams. The plasterer was at home with his daughter when jilted madman Paul Lambert broke into the house next door planning to rape and kill his former Tinder date. Without any hesitation he ran to the young doctor’s aid and into the face of certain danger.
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STEVE Willdern will never forget the sound of Angela Jay’s screams.
The Port Macquarie plasterer was at home with his daughter when jilted madman Paul Lambert broke into the house next door planning to rape and kill his former Tinder date.
With every piercing scream that escaped Angela Jay’s four-bedroom home on that fateful day in November 2016, Willdern felt a sick tightening in the pit of his stomach.
Despite knowingly running into the face of danger, Willdern charged next door. As he was about to burst through the door, the blood-soaked trainee obstetrician and gynaecologist staggered on to the driveway.
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Angela had been stabbed 11 times and doused in petrol by deranged 36-year-old finance worker Lambert, who she had briefly dated.
As Lambert fled the scene by car — he was gunned down by police hours later as he resisted arrest — Willdern tended to the bleeding medic on a blanket in his garage, to where he had carried her.
“I had to do something quick because she was in serious trouble. Anything could have happened that day. I heard a scream and knew something was horribly wrong,” Willdern said.
“You would never imagine something like that happen in a million years, and it happened beside us.”
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And Angela Jay said: “Steve helped me put pressure on my wounds to help stop the bleeding and washed my face to get the petrol off. He tries to say that he did what anyone would do, but that’s not true. He had the courage to take action and was going to try and help me, that is a hero.
“He helped save my life and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay him or thank him properly for what he did for me.”
It is for these lifesaving actions and the risk he took to his own safety that Angela nominated Willdern for a Pride of Australia medal.
But Today, Steve and Angela were jointly awarded a Pride of Australia medal for their outstanding acts of heroism. They were presented with their medals at the Sydney Opera House along with 13 others from across NSW.
They include ordinary Australians thrust into life-and-death situations, courageous police officers, selfless individuals dedicated to protecting animals and devastated families fighting for change and justice.
This is the 13th annual Pride of Australia awards, Inspired by the Liberty Medal established by the New York Post in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Pride of Australia underpins the notion there is no greater measure of a society’s strength than its ability to recognise, learn from and reward its true heroes.