‘Thank you for living’: Bondi survivor meets her superhero

Liya Barko has finally met her real-life “superhero”, an anonymous man in a green T-shirt who saved her life after a knife cut through both her kidneys during the Bondi Junction attack.

Six people were stabbed to death by assailant Joel Cauchi. Barko, 35, may have been the seventh if not for the actions of Wayne Tolver-Banks and his wife Michi, who came to her rescue at the Westfield shopping centre.

Meeting this week for the first time since that bloody attack on April 13, Tolver-Banks and Barko hugged a few times.

“I am so happy to see you alive. It is so good,” Tolver-Banks said in the interview broadcast on Nine, the owner of this masthead.

He only discovered Barko had recovered after hearing about her interview with Nine News reporter Damian Ryan earlier this week, in which she had talked about wanting to thank the tall, calm man in the green shirt.

Barko thanked him for saving her life. “Thank you for living,” he replied.

Asked how he stayed calm and responded quickly, Tolver-Banks, a health and safety executive with Mitsubishi, said his previous training in the military had kicked in.

Bondi Junction stabbing survivor Liya Barko (right) is reunited with Wayne Tolver-Banks.Credit: Nine News

“It was tough, you could say I wasn’t ready for it, but I looked at you,” he told Barko, “and when I saw the man stab you, I said I have to help you because I didn’t want you to die.”

In Wednesday night’s follow-up interview, Barko said everything seemed to happen in seconds.

“You were my angel appearing in the right place at the right time,” she said. “That was one of the reasons I stayed calm.”

The Tolver-Banks, from Cherrybrook in north-west Sydney, refused to let Barko die.

Barko said that people like them were the real heroes of the Bondi attack.

“All these movies with superheroes … after this situation, these are the superheroes we really need on our side,” she said. “The people who can be with you when you suffer, taking care of you.”

She said Michi made her promise “not to let go”. She shook Barko to keep her conscious as they waited for police and paramedics to arrive.

In the panic after she was stabbed, Barko recalled others crying and screaming in fear. Tolver-Banks told a woman to calm down. “If you scream, he knows where you are... he [Cauchi] can find you,” he reminded the panicking woman.

After checking if Barko could walk, they moved her to safety inside the high fashion shop Sass & Bide, which then locked its doors.

Nine News reporter Ryan said after the trauma of the past month and the grieving for those who died at Westfield Bondi Junction, it was good to report on something positive.

Tolver-Banks and Barko were relieved to have met, he said.

“It was all part of the healing process,” said Ryan. “I think we have to move on from this story, but the way to move on is to have something positive to think about. We will never forget it, but for something positive, Liya [Barko] is it.”

Barko is only in Australia for 18 months on a student visa, but her friends hope the federal government will give permanent residency to a woman they describe as “brave, strong and intelligent”.

Her friend Kathryn Roulstone, of Bellevue Hill, said Barko had only just walked through the doors of Westfield Bondi Junction when she was stabbed.

“She was not afforded the opportunity to be a hero, but she has been seriously injured, and we should provide her the same opportunity to stay,” she said.

The “bollard man”, French national Damien Guerot, who tried to stop Cauchi, has been granted permanent residency for his bravery. Cauchi was shot dead by police.

The independent federal MP for Wentworth Allegra Spender said they had been advocating on Barko’s behalf with Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.

“Liya is a very valued member of the community, and we all want to see her recovered and safely living here,” she said.

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