Behind the lines: Why police officer Michael Pratt rammed his Mazda into a Clifton Hill bank
At just 21, off-duty police officer Michael Pratt didn’t think twice about thwarting a trio of armed bandits as they entered a Clifton Hill bank, ramming his Mazda at the doors and earning himself a bullet in the back and a bravery medal in the process.
Behind the Scenes
Don't miss out on the headlines from Behind the Scenes. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Michael Pratt GC wasn’t able to take tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace this year.
Mind you, he’s already been 16 times to Her Majesty’s biennial garden party for some of the world’s bravest people.
He’s disappointed nevertheless that the coronavirus pandemic means he’ll have to wait until 2022 to meet new members of what might be called in less formal surroundings the Courage Club.
Pratt is the only surviving Australian winner of the George Cross — the country’s highest civilian award for bravery. The equivalent award in the newer Australian honours system is the Cross of Valour, an award that has been made to only five Australians.
Pratt, a 21-year-old policeman and married just three months, was on his way to have a haircut when he earned his medal.
He drove his own car, on a day off and unarmed, into the front door of a Clifton Hill bank when he saw three armed and masked bandits enter the bank on June 4, 1976.
His bravery almost cost him his life. Almost 45 years later, he still ponders the questions posed in the headline over a feature I wrote in the Sun News Pictorial at the time:
“Hero or Halfwit?” “Martyr or Mug?”.
“I might do things differently if I had my time again, but I didn’t really have time to stop and weigh up the pros and cons. I think your training and the adrenaline kicks in and away you go. I had no qualms about it at the time,” he reflected this week, as Police Remembrance Day encouraged the community to consider the dangers police face daily.
“The only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise. I reckon the three crooks must have been well and truly surprised when my Mazda came through the intersection, up and over the gutter, crashed into the door of the bank and blocked the entrance.”
Pratt was not to know that the bandits — all wearing balaclavas and armed with handguns — were among the most prolific and dangerous armed bandits in the country. But the barrel-chested policeman, who had been captain of the Preston Tech footy team not so long ago, was ready to take them on.
At least, he thought he was ready, until he went to the boot of his car expecting to arm himself with a long-handled shovel he’d been using the previous day at a bush block he owned with a mate.
“You can do some serious damage with a shovel, particularly if it’s got a sharp edge, and it gives you a bit of room to manoeuvre. But when I opened the boot it wasn’t there, so the only tool I could lay my hands on was the jack handle. Then I just watched and waited.
“There was one bloke inside the door of the bank, and he’s waving his arms around, pointing a silver .22 pistol at me and telling me to move my car. Another bloke is up on the counter, fanning his revolver over the staff and customers in the bank, and the third one was in the tellers’ cages, yelling out to the bloke watching the front door ‘Shoot him!, Shoot him!, Get him out of the way!’
“Then the manager and a customer in his office ran towards the back of the bank, and the crook who’d stayed in the public area fired a shot that hit the door frame at head height.”
At that stage the bandit who had been emptying the tills, (notorious Sydney gunman Lance Chee) decided things were becoming far too complicated, jumped back over the counter and bolted out the back door. But the other pair (a hitman-for-hire and his cousin) were determined to leave the same way they’d arrived.
“They were pulling on the bank door, but couldn’t open it because of the damage my car had done to the frame. They soon solved that problem though by kicking the glass out of the door, which freed it up and let them pull it open.
“The guy who had been watching the doorway then came across the bonnet, so I grabbed hold of him and it was on. I got a few good ones in and so did he, but he’s gone down in front of me, semiconscious and on his hands and knees.
“When I next saw the other bloke he was standing about eight to ten feet away, with his gun pointed straight at me. The one hunched over on the ground started to get up, so I thought if I could get him in a bear hug and use him as a shield his mate wouldn’t shoot.
“But somehow I lost sight of the bloke with the gun and he got around behind me. Then he shot me in the back from about six feet, and down I went”.
The Wembley .38 bullet entered Michael’s back near his left shoulder blade, missed his heart and left a burn scar on the wall of his aorta. It then punctured his left lung and left a hole in his spine before stopping inside his right lung. It now rests in a specimen jar at his home.
He credits doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital — and perhaps a little divine intervention — with saving his life. One of his most vivid recollections is of a priest giving him the Last Rites, as a “tiny little nun” held his hand and assured him everything would be all right.
Armed Robbery Squad detectives were among his first visitors the next morning, following five hours of surgery, and took a dying deposition in case his condition worsened.
They already had their suspicions about who may have been involved in the holdup, and Michael confirmed them when he was shown a photo board and picked the hitman as the man who shot him.
Victoria Police “heavy” squads turned the underworld upside down in their hunt for the bandits, who changed addresses three times in the week after the shooting before the hitman and his cousin were arrested in Fairfield after a tip from a removal van driver. Chee was later arrested in NSW.
READ MORE:
FAKE LAWYER MOST BIZARRE CASE COP HAS EVER SEEN