Radio star Kate Langbroek injured in ‘crazed, violent’ attack

RADIO star Kate Langbroek has lashed out after being injured while attempting to protect her babysitter in an unprovoked attack.

BRUISED, shaken, and angry, radio star Kate Langbroek has lashed out after she was injured trying to protect her babysitter who was attacked outside her home in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda.

A furious Langbroek, still sporting the bruises she sustained after the “crazed, terrifying and violent” attack, unleashed on politicians, saying they’d failed to clean up St Kilda in the face of growing crime rates.

The comedian and broadcaster certainly wasn’t laughing and challenged them on-air to “stop the degradation” of St Kilda hill.

Speaking on her show with Dave Hughes, Hughesy and Kate, Langbroek said the terrifying random attack on Friday night was the last straw.

Langbroek said her babysitter, Annabelle, was walking to her car — parked less than 10 metres from Langbroek's front door — about 10pm when a man tried to get into the passenger seat.

The man was yelling and swearing at her.

“The real vulnerable are the decent citizens of St Kilda,” Langbroek wrote in the tweet showing her bruises. Picture: Twitter/Kate Langbroek

Annabelle, terrified, ran back to Langbroek’s house, thumping on the front door, with the man following her.

With Langbroek’s children and the babysitter inside, the man — who appeared “deranged” — tried to get into the property after Langbroek’s husband Peter, went outside to investigate.

Langbroek has joined Peter at the front gate when the man saw them from across the road, and yelling and swearing, ran towards the house.

“He was quick as insanity and was right there on us,” she said.

She tied to shut the gate as the man wrestled with it. Realising she has left the front door open, Langbroek then ran for it, slamming it once she was inside and jamming her leg against it to brace it.

As he tried to kick the door in, police were called, and Langbroek’s husband, still outside, demanded the man get out onto the street.

Once he did, the man was “so scattered, he just went the other way”, Peter said, adding the man was still yelling, and trying to access other houses.

Police were called, and Langbroek said about 12 officers arrived to take the man away.

She later tweeted a picture, showing the large bruise on her arm, to Victorian Housing minister Martin Foley.

“This is the bruise I sustained trying to keep that ‘vulnerable’ resident from kicking our front door in on Friday night,” she wrote. “The real vulnerable are the decent citizens of St Kilda. We await your action.”

The attack comes amid growing problems in the area, which residents say have increased since the closure of the infamous Gatwick Hotel — currently being transformed after being bought as the site of the next series of reality renovation show The Block.

Locals say problems of drug abuse in the streets, violence, abuse and prostitution have shifted to an area in nearby Little Grey Street since the Gatwick closed.

A laneway off Little Grey St, St. Kilda where residents have reported an increase in crime, drug use, assaults and thefts since The Gatwick closed. Picture: Penny Stephens

Langbroek told listeners “the people we have elected to solve the problems are not solving the problems.”

“People who are living good, decent lives are having those lives compromised by people who have chosen to do the opposite,” she said.

Dangerous behaviour in the area had become “rampant” in St Kilda since residents of the Gatwick were moved to public housing, Langbroek told Fairfax.

“Our children walk to school and [the other day] we saw a guy get a Glasgow kiss,” she said. “He was just walking around the corner with his headphones in and he got headbutted in broad daylight. It’s crazy.”

“It’s an extremely complex issue, but in the meantime we’re not being offered the most basic short-term solution.

“They [politicians] want to look like heroes and use words like ‘vulnerable’ and ‘the community’, but they’re not actually servicing the community. “