‘Like a war zone’: Bondi Rescue star ignored the danger and raced to help

Bondi Beach lifeguard Andy Reid says “a bit of instinct and a bit of experience” kicked into gear when he heard people had been stabbed while he was shopping in Bondi Junction on Saturday.

Reid, who stars in reality TV series Bondi Rescue, was shopping for a new bed in Myer when staff said there was a stabbing. Through the shuttered doors at the department store’s entrance, Reid could see a woman bleeding.

Andy Reid and his friend, Ashlee Good, who was killed in the Bondi Junction stabbing.

“There was so much blood around, and I was like ‘I’ve got to get down there and help’,” Reid said.

He convinced a security guard to let him slip underneath the door, where he emerged to find what “looked like a war zone”.

“You looked down the shopping centre, and you could just see victims sort of spread out over every 50 metres.”

Without the equipment or support he’s used to while on patrol at Bondi Beach, Reid improvised, grabbing clothes off a Cotton On rack for a makeshift tourniquet for a victim who had been stabbed in the shoulder.

Andrew Reid

After treating one woman, Reid assisted police in performing CPR on another, when he noticed an empty pram.

“It was just such an eerie sight because of what I just witnessed, thinking, ‘Who did the pram belong to?’.”

Reid said he “didn’t really think about [the potential danger] at all” as he was too busy providing first aid.

When Reid learnt the news that his friend, Ashlee Good, was among the deceased, he made the connection that the empty pram likely belonged to the 38-year-old mother and her nine-month-old baby, who is in a serious but stable condition in hospital.

“I just think it’s gonna take a few days. To be honest, I think everyone is just in shock,” Reid said of the community response to Good’s death.

“To not only lose like a beautiful member of the community, but just the circumstances around how it happened …. I just know for me, I’m just like, ‘What’s actually happened?’.”