‘It doesn’t stop people using (machetes) that already have them in their possession’: Dandenong machete attack victim speaks out

Crysta Healey has spoken of her horror at being attacked by machete-wielding thugs at a service station and says she can’t understand the state government’s delay in one key step of its reforms.

Crysta Healey has not filled up her own petrol tank since she was attacked with a machete in an attempted carjacking at a Dandenong service station earlier this month.

“I don’t do it anymore” she told the Herald Sun.

Instead, she has organised with friends and family to fill up her car when it is running on empty.

Crysta Healey was attacked by machete-wielding thugs. Picture: Josie Hayden

The 29-year-old KPMG worker on Monday welcomed the ban on machete sales but urged the government not to wait until September 1 to fully prohibit the deadly weapons.

“Why wait?,” she said.

“I think the reform is definitely a step in the right direction and I hope it will stop the sale of them, especially to minors, but it doesn’t stop people using them that already have them in their possession,” she said.

Ms Healey was filling up her car at a BP on the Princes Highway on May 19 when a white Ford with no license plates pulled up behind her.

Ms Healey went into the store to pay, but when she returned she was confronted by a gang of male teenagers, at least one of whom was wielding a machete.

The offenders shouted at her to “give me your keys”, but Ms Healey held bravely held on as they attacked her.

“I got hit pretty badly in my arm and wrist,” she said.

“They made multiple blows to wrist because they clearly wanted to get me to drop my keys.”

The teenagers fled in the Ford SUV, and Ms Healey returned to the service station where she waited for police to arrive.

From the attack she sustained some “bad bruising” that is now starting to heal, but the impact to her wrist was severe.

Detectives have since arrested a 15-year-old boy and girl over the attack on Ms Healey.

The boy was charged with attempted aggravated carjacking, intentionally cause injury, theft of motor vehicle and weapon offences.

Since Ms Healey’s ordeal there has been a police shooting in South Melbourne involving a machete, a gang of machete-wielding teens descended on Caroline Springs shopping centre, and the gang brawl at Northland shopping centre that prompted the state government to rethink its approach to a machete ban.